


Epoch

by doctorate_in_realology



Series: Recall [2]
Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: F/F, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Friendship, Gen, Humor, Post-Fall of Overwatch, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-10-25
Updated: 2016-11-02
Packaged: 2018-08-24 13:09:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 13
Words: 21,071
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8373418
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/doctorate_in_realology/pseuds/doctorate_in_realology
Summary: After Talon's downfall, Overwatch turns their attention to different shores. Seldom does malice idle for too long, however, before thrusting itself back into the fray.





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> WHAT'S GOOD I'M BACK WITH MORE POORLY-WRITTEN WORD SALADS MASQUERADING AS STORIES THAT HAVE SOMETHING COMPELLING ABOUT THEM
> 
> If you're new to the festering pile of pee and feet that is my AO3 page, then before reading this fic, give its predecessor, Recall, a quick lil' gander if that sounds like the kinda thing that your fancy would be tickled by! The link is here: http://archiveofourown.org/works/8276728
> 
> ANYHOO, this will be uploaded in a similar fashion as Recall was. That is to say; two chapters a day, perhaps one depending on the length. I'm hesitant to say that I'm a little more happy with this one than Recall because I don't want to get people's hopes up and then inevitably disappoint them, but I'm a little more happy with this one than Recall. Some of it, at least. Take that statement with a grain of salt. There's my thoughts on it. AWAY WE GO
> 
> UPDATE 2/18/2017: This fic is completed. For whatever bullshit reason it never saves when I edit it to read 13/13 chapters. It has been finished for a while but I figured I should throw this on here.

An endless void. Blinding darkness so permeating that it was almost tangible enough to grab hold of.

Was she blind? Or just seeing blackness? Was she deaf? Or just hearing silence? She tried to scream, for she did not know, but her voice was as soundless as the vacuum in which she drifted. How long had she been here? How much time had—

…Time? What was time? An axiom? An illusion?

Suddenly, a revelation. Among the seemingly infinite unknowns, an absolute.

Time was her enemy. It clawed at her, gnawed with mashing teeth, sook to take her in its smothering embrace and plunge her into nothingness.

Is that where she was? Had it succeeded? It must have. Yes. Yes, of course. It could not have been anything else.

She was doomed, she knew. She’d never escape. It was far too late for that. This was her fate. Never again would she return to the real world, to her home, to her friends, to…

To her.

Tracer’s eyes snapped open.

She sat up in an instant with a sharp gasp. She was freezing cold, and drenched in sweat. She shot her hand to the end of her bed.

The cold metal of her chronal accelerator, still close enough for its effect on her to maintain, met her grasp; she clutched her hand around it like a vice. If it had remained away from her any longer, surely she would have vanished—plucked from existence without a whisper.

She had not noticed the cold hand gripping her shoulder, nor the voice in her ear.

“Lena!”

She looked to her right. Skin as blue as ice and almost as cold dimly reflected the false moonlight fabricated by the room’s lighting. Bright yellow eyes shone through the thin blue veil of night, punctuating a beautiful— _very_ beautiful—face.

“Oh,” Tracer said meekly. “Sorry, Am. Didn’t mean to wake you.”

“A bad dream?” Amélie asked, already knowing the answer. Tracer nodded, her eyes flitting about the bedsheet. Her hand lifted ever so slightly from the accelerator.

She finally turned to meet her gaze. There was sympathy in Amélie’s eyes; comfort to be found in their piercing yet alluring temperament. Amélie brushed her thumb across Tracer’s cheek, and brought her hand to rest at the base of her neck. Tracer could not abstain from smiling.

Amélie reciprocated. “There it is. Back in no time as usual.”

Tracer exhaled a short laugh. She leaned towards her, pulling her closer so that their lips met.

“You faded away again? Is that what the dream was about?” Amélie accurately inquired. It was a great fear of Tracer’s, one of the few she really had.

“Yeah. Re-occurs sometimes. Just a dream though, nothin’ to worry about,” she said, as if it was for Amélie’s benefit and not her own.

“That will never happen, Lena. I’ll never let it.” Amélie whispered, wrapping her arms around her. “Sleep.”

A smile of relief adorned Tracer’s lips as she collapsed back into slumber, enfolded in arms that quickly warmed to her touch. Sleep returned quickly; sound, and thankfully free from harmful visions.

Amélie was right; she would never let that happen. Tracer had nothing to fear.


	2. Morning Routine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The agents of Overwatch enjoy some morning conversation amongst themselves. Never a dull moment with a group like that, though.

“Hold up,” McCree said, halting Tracer as she walked up to the counter behind him, plate-in-hand. “Wait there. Hold your plate out.”

Tracer laughed. “You’re really going to try this?”

“Sure am.”

“You’re gonna miss.”

He shushed her, prompting her to laugh even more. The pan he held in his hand hovered up and down over the stove in preparation. He flicked it upwards.

A pancake arced through the air over the mess hall counter. He watched its descent with bated breath, and it landed directly on Tracer’s plate.

He shot his free hand in the air, cheering in triumphant excitement. The exclamation reverberated throughout the mess hall, along with the impressed laughter of both Tracer and their comrades seated behind them.

“Been tryin’ to do that all morning!” McCree said.

“He missed about eight times,” D.Va said as Tracer sat down. “Guy’s _wasting_ all the batter.” She made a point of exclaiming the conclusion of her sentence loud enough for McCree to hear.

“Well they ain’t exactly aerodynamic, _thank y’all kindly_ ,” McCree shouted, feigning frustration in his voice in comedic hyperbole.

“Then don’t throw them!”

“‘Then don’t throw them, I’m D.Va, I don’t like fun,’” he mocked in an intentionally poor impression of her voice.

“What’s on the bill for this week?” Tracer asked, cutting into her breakfast.

“Well,” Fareeha began, “Angela’s got some medical conference in Hannover. She’s due to give an address there about—” She looked over to her. “What did you call it again?”

“About the popularizing of nanobots in mainstream healthcare,” Angela replied. “Many people are still opposed to the idea, be it for religious reasons or otherwise—they think it’s…” She pondered briefly, looking for the correct term. “Impure. I’ve been asked to offer my input on account of my ‘expertise in the field of nanotechnology,’ I believe was how they put it.”

“She’s allowed to bring two guests,” Fareeha continued. “I’m going with her as a security detail, and Reinhardt’s coming because he all begged us to take him.”

“What can I say?” Reinhardt chimed in with a laugh. “I miss the home country!”

“And the beer. And the sausage festivals.” Angela smirked.

“Exactly! The home country!” He roared with laughter.

“As for what I’m doing,” Mei began, adding what her agenda consisted of, “there’s an old Overwatch Eco-Watchpoint in Cape Dezhnev. I believe it still houses some very crucial environmental data. It could go a long way towards helping us better understand the effects the Omnic Crises have had on the environment. Jesse and I will be going there to retrieve it.”

“Sounds like a lovely vacation,” Tracer replied.

“Yeah, if you count freezin’ your ass off as a vacation,” McCree shouted from the kitchen.

“What about you, Tracer?” Mei inquired, laughing at the retort from behind the counter. “What are your plans?”

“Oh, nothing much, really. Winston here’s been keeping an ear to the ground for this crime syndicate we’ve been after for a little while in Jakarta. Amélie and I’ve put a stop to a couple international operations of theirs so far, with a fair bit of help from Genji over there,” she said, leaning backwards to see him and offer a smile, “but we’re trying to root ‘em out. Outside of that, can’t say much else has been exciting.”

They were interrupted by a knock on the door. A strange sound, given their location. One rarely knocked to enter the mess hall; they simply strode in.

A few quizzical glances were exchanged. Angela stood up from her seat to open the entrance. She tapped the button on the wall to the side of the door. It parted in two, and revealed an older woman standing beyond.

Angela’s eyes narrowed almost imperceptibly. She gasped suddenly and snapped a hand up to her mouth, almost falling backwards as she took a reactionary step away from the door.

Everyone shot from their seats in reflex. McCree’s hand was on the grip of the revolver holstered on his waist in the blink of an eye, ready by sheer instinct.

His hand slowly drifted away from the weapon, the identity of the woman at the door having dawned on him.

“I’ll be god damned...”


	3. Old Soldiers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An unexpected guest returns.

“Apologies for startling you, Doctor,” the woman said, quietly and with little inflection. White hair that contrasted with dark skin was tied in a neat braid that draped over her shoulder. A hood hung from her neck, and a tattered, flowing coat reached down to just below her knees. She had a rifle slung over her shoulder. Most notably, she had an eyepatch over her right eye, and an Eye of Horus tattoo beneath her left.

Unmistakable.

Ana Amari. Yet another ghost had just wandered into their midst.

She scanned the room’s inhabitants as she entered. Each were paralyzed in shock, trying to muster some kind of response. Her eye stopped on Fareeha.

Right from the moment she saw her, she knew that all the time she’d spent preparing what to say for this reunion was going to be for naught.

Fareeha took tentative steps towards her, her eyes not dropping from Ana’s for even a moment. Her footsteps were the only sound in the room, save for the quickly fading sizzle of the stovetop food that McCree had completely forgotten about.

She approached her, finally. For the agents of Overwatch, it had taken seconds. For Ana, it had been…

Years. Too long. Far, far too long.

Her daughter was a head and a half taller than she was, now; a far cry from the bashful young girl she had left behind. Her shoulders had broadened, her arms and legs and torso had filled out with muscles like scarred granite—those scars were trophies to Fareeha; to Ana, they were grievous reminders.

She stared deep into brown eyes that mirrored her own; as scintillating as she remembered them. Those hadn’t changed, at least.

“My, how much you’ve grown,” Ana quietly said as she lifted a hand to her daughter’s cheek.

She maligned herself for her choice of words. Years of living as a dead woman, years apart from her own daughter, and that was the best she had?

A tear fell onto the thumb that Ana brushed across the curved tail of the Udjat beneath Fareeha’s eye. Apparently, she was the only one who cared about the way she worded her greeting, as her daughter pulled her into her arms so tightly that not a force in the world could have pried them apart. Ana wrapped her arms around her in return.

“I’m sorry, Fareeha.”

“I know.”

“I’m sorry I’ve not been here for you. I’m sorry I wasn’t there enough when you were a girl. I’m sorry I left.”

Fareeha remained silent, slowly digesting every word.

“There’s something I’ve wanted to tell you for a long time.”

“What is it?”

Ana drew back from her and cupped her face in her hands. It took great effort to call to mind the proper words.

“I didn’t want you to lead the life I did because I was terrified that it would haunt you the same way it haunts me. My actions made you think that I was ashamed of you for choosing the life you wanted…”

Her gaze fell from Fareeha’s face in self-condemnation, returning after a moment's silence.

“I am proud of you. I am _proud of you_ , and all that you’ve done. Nothing in the world will change that.”

Tears stung fiercely behind Fareeha’s eyes, but she fought them back just as ferociously.

“I love you, _habibti_.”

“…I love you too, mom.”

They left one another’s grasp, and Ana looked around the room once again. Angela, Lena, Jesse, Mei, Winston, Torbjӧrn, Reinhardt… All of them. She remembered all of them. They’d hardly changed at all—much like the way they were standing.

“Well?” she suddenly spoke up. “Come and give me a hug, the lot of you,” she said, and she marshalled the brightest smile she possibly could.

The entire room erupted. Arms were thrown around her shoulders, and everyone had congregated into a writhing mass of heartfelt greetings and tears of joy. The much expected questions of “What happened?” and “Where have you been?” arose soon enough.

“I hadn’t the courage to face anyone after the hostage rescue in Egypt went sour. I felt like…” she paused briefly, cursing herself for her cowardice. “Like I’d failed everyone. It was beyond cowardly, what I did. Inexcusable, even. But I simply couldn’t handle the gravity of my inability to protect my loved ones. I needed time.

“I took to bounty hunting after my recovery. I’d been mapping out a compound in Cairo that belonged to a criminal by the name of Hakim for months. At least, until Jack over there, stubborn and bull-headed as usual,” she said, jabbing a finger at him with a wry smirk, “stormed in over the front wall and scattered my plans to the wind. It was the first time I’d seen him since the mission.

“I told him I still wasn’t ready to pick up the fight again. When Winston initiated the recall, Jack contacted me to let me know that the option was on the table. I’ve been deciding whether or not to join back ever since.

“I’ve missed so much… Much more than I should have.” She turned back to Fareeha. “Much more than a mother should have.”

“You’re here now,” Fareeha returned. “That’s what matters.”

Ana’s expression imported either shock or relief. She had expected her to be angry—that she reacted so coolly and welcomingly was nothing short of a miracle.

“Thank you, Fareeha.”

The salutations continued on for some time, and the tension returned to happiness at Ana’s return once again.

Reinhardt knelt down to her height, voice shaking and eyes misty.

“You are as lovely as ever, Ana. Not even centuries could erode your beauty.”

“Just as gallant as I remember,” she chimed. “It’s good to see you, Reinhardt.” She hooked her arms around his neck, and he enveloped her in an uncharacteristically soft embrace.

McCree pointed to Jack, then to Ana. “First you, then you… Should we, uh, be expecting any more folks comin’ back from the dead? Lay out the red carpet for ‘em, maybe?”

As if perfectly rehearsed, Amélie walked into the mess hall. The room went silent again, and Ana turned. Amélie’s heart plummeted into her stomach, and all semblance of colour flooded from Tracer’s face.

 _This is bad, this is very, very bad,_ Tracer thought, her mind racing in panic. To Ana, Amélie was still Widowmaker. Still the same woman who had claimed her eye—and her life—with an unhesitant pull of a trigger.

The expression on Ana’s face, however, was almost… Amused.

“Well. I really have missed a great deal, haven’t I?” She slowly walked up to Amélie. She exhaled deeply, and stared deep into the woman’s harsh yellow eyes. “I assume you must be with us, now, then?”

Amélie nodded, daring not to speak.

“Hm,” Ana mumbled, pursing her lips in thought.

She considered removing her eyepatch. To remind Amélie what she’d done; to remind her that she would not hesitate to snuff out her life at the sight of an errant twitch—all with an eyeless gaze.

But she was in no place to cast judgement. The years of isolation were of her own volition, not Amélie’s.

She turned to the others for confirmation. They nodded, one and all.

“She’s family, Ana,” Winston said.

With that, Ana extended her hand. “More than enough for me.”

Amélie was almost taken aback. She quickly collected herself, and shook the hand that was offered to her. The room finally exhaled, Tracer’s being the loudest and most relieved.

Ana squeezed a little tighter than usual. Just in case.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've just started a new job, so on some days, the uploads will be a little later in the day than usual. The daily upload schedule is otherwise unchanged.
> 
> UPDATE 12/25/2016: Hey guess what I'm a fucking IDIOT and completely forgot that Ana wrote a letter to Pharah that acted as the narration for her origin story so this reunion between the two of them doesn't make as much sense. I mean I guess maybe it still sort of does??? Letters aren't really a good way to convey this shit so I guess she would have had to wait anyway??? WHATEVER OOPSIE FUCKING POOPSIE THAT'S WHAT I GET FOR BEING A FUCKING APE OKAY BYE


	4. Planning Ahead

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tracer puts Amélie at ease about Ana's return. A to-be attempt on someone's life comes to light.

At Reinhardt’s insistence, he, Ana, Torbjörn and Jack were to spend the evening in the lounge over a bottle of wine—some reminiscing was very much in order, but not before making sure to consult Amélie for recommendations. She handed him a list of several wines of varying prices and pronunciations that she was quick to assure were worth every ounce. He bowed out of the room with a multitude of thanks.

Amélie closed the door behind him, allowing herself a small laugh; he’d been nothing but sunshine and nervous flattery ever since Ana’s return.

_Reinhardt, you devil,_ she mused.

Tracer was seated on the couch behind her with small pad on her lap.

“What’re you working on?” Amélie asked.

“Hm? Oh—Winston forwarded me some data he found on our Jakartan crime ring a while ago. Just lookin’ over it.”

Amélie hummed in acknowledgement. “Have you noticed how Reinhardt’s been acting?”

“Ever since Cap got back? Yeah. Cute, innit?” she replied, barely able to contain her giddiness.

Amélie thought for a moment. “It is, yes.”

Tracer looked up at her, detecting something in her voice, and set the tablet aside. “How about you? How are you feeling about it? About Ana, I mean.”

Amélie took a seat next to her with a sigh. “Surprised. Somewhat nervous.”

“You don’t think she trusts you,” Tracer voiced the rest of the thought.

“I know she doesn’t. Why would she? I shot her like a dog.” She breathed deeply again, appreciating the silence that Tracer provided her so that she could continue. “I suppose I’m nervous that… some of our friends may take her word over mine, if it ever came to that. Not that I don’t trust them… Just that their loyalties may be with her first, and rightfully so; they’ve known her longer, after all.”

Tracer placed her hands on Amélie’s shoulders. “You’re overthinking this, love. You heard what Winston said. You’re family,” she reminded, giving Amélie a gentle endearing shake. “Your word is as meaningful as Ana’s. Everyone here loves you as much as they love her.”

She placed a quick kiss on Amélie’s cheek, giving her cause to smile, before jabbing a prideful thumb to her chest and saying “I love ya more, though, _darlin’.”_

The “ _darlin’_ ” was said in such a ridiculously over-exaggerated southern drawl—clearly meant at McCree’s expense—that she couldn’t help but laugh. The rest of the expression’s meaning was not diminished by the quip, however.

Amélie face flooded with warmth. “Thank you.”

“Any time. Hungry?”

“Ah, ravenous.”

The two ambled over to the mess hall. Inside sat Fareeha and Angela, presumably talking about their upcoming conference. Tracer and Amélie seated themselves beside them after finding food suitable enough to sate their appetite. They were in the midst of conversation when Athena’s voice reverberated throughout the large room.

“Doctor Ziegler, at your earliest convenience, could you please visit Winston in his office?”

“Sounds like someone’s in trouble,” Tracer jibed.

Angela grinned and shook her head. “At once, Athena. I’ll be there shortly.” She turned to the others around her. “Care to tag along?”

“Sure, why not.”

 

*******

 

The four women entered Winston’s office, characteristically littered with scattered notes and blueprints and half-built devices. Tracer often jokingly likened him to a hermetic scientist-turned-crackpot conspiracy theorist.

He turned away from his work after a moment’s silence, as if he’d forgotten that company was on their way. “Oh. Good to see you all. Please, feel free to take a seat. I wanted to talk to you about your conference in Germany this week, Angela.”

He tapped a key on the large keyboard laid out in front of the sizeable monitor mounted on the wall. On its screen appeared a list of names. He scrolled down its length, and halted on one name in particular—Sebastian Heimsoff.

“Athena and I were profiling passengers for planes and trains bound for Hannover, when I noticed this name.”

Fareeha looked puzzlingly at Winston. “Isn’t that rather intrusive?”

“And kinda creepy?” Tracer added.

“Admittedly, yes,” Winston conceded, “but we do it every time one of us ventures out like this. Chalk it up to paranoia if you will, but I’d much rather be safe than sorry, and take any precautions I can towards keeping us safe. Especially in our line of work, given that it is technically criminal activity. Perhaps you’ll see it my way after I explain to you just who Sebastian Heimsoff is. Athena, please pull up his file.”

A dossier containing a picture of the man—shoulder-length dark blonde hair, green eyes and poorly kempt facial hair—zoomed to the foreground of the screen.

“His real name is Jürgen Weiss. ‘Sebastian Heimsoff’ is an old alias he used as of one of our contacts many years ago. Specifically, one of Blackwatch’s contacts.”

“Blackwatch?” Angela echoed. “That means—“

“Gabriel Reyes,” the two said in unison. “Reaper.”

Amélie and Fareeha straightened slightly at the mention of the name, and Tracer shuffled in her seat to assume a position that indicated greater attention was being paid.

“You think he survived the explosion at Talon’s headquarters?” Tracer asked.

“No doubt,” Angela responded, her voice level and terse. “It would take much more than that to kill him.” She almost looked pained—reminded that what Gabriel had become was due in no small part to her actions.

“Reaper must have caught wind of your attendance at the conference,” Winston said grimly. “Even if he doesn’t plan to show up there himself, he’s sent for one of his old contacts to arrive. Most likely with others in tow.”

He looked straight into Angela’s eyes. “He wants revenge. They’re going to try to kill you, Angela.”

All eyes were upon her, then. She was looking down absently at a blueprint on the table next to her, tapping a wrench with the tip of her finger.

Her head slowly rose, her face bearing that expression of hers that meant she’d had an idea.

“Good.”

Winston was absolutely quizzical, exchanging a glance with Amélie and Tracer.

“What?” Fareeha asked. “Angela, you can’t go there, it’s too dangerous—“

“They don’t know that we know of their plan—we have a perfect opportunity to draw them out.”

“You want to be live bait for a squad of hitmen?” Fareeha asked her, clearly disturbed at the thought of it all. “Absolutely not.”

“We can bring one of them in for questioning. If Talon cells are beginning to resurface and regroup, then we can’t pass a chance like this up. Besides,” she paused, smiling conspiratorially, “I’m going to have the three of you there with me.”

Fareeha, Amélie and Tracer cocked their heads at her. At once, understanding dawned upon Amélie and Winston.

Angela, sensing she should explain, continued. “Lena and Fareeha, you two will be blending in among the crowd. Amélie, you’ll take up a position on a nearby rooftop, preferably with good visibility of the conference hall and the doors. Each of you keep an eye and ear out for the hitmen—once I appear onstage, you’ll have very little time to act. If you aren’t sure by then, those last few moments will have to be enough to cement your certainty as to who the killers are. Wait until they make their move, then make yours.”

“‘The play’s the thing’,” Winston quoted in wonderment. “Good thinking, Angela!”

Fareeha shot him a gaze of bewilderment. “Good thinking?! Not a chance! We’re not putting Angela’s life on the line for this!”

“She’s right, Pharah,” Amélie said. “Another opportunity such as this may not present itself for a while. I don’t like it much either, but it’s the best we have.”

Fareeha’s gaze darted from face to face. She opened her mouth, about to protest, but, outnumbered as she was in the decision, finally acquiesced.

“Fine. We’ll do it.”

Angela took her hand. “Don’t worry, Fareeha. I’ll be fine. Everybody get packing.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The next chapter is one of my personal favourites, really excited to publish it for you guys. Become hype


	5. King's Conscience

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fareeha, Angela, Tracer and Amélie travel to Hannover to Angela's conference to catch the men meaning to do her harm.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one's pretty lengthy, so today's upload will only be one chapter. I had a lot of fun with this one, I hope you guys enjoy it!

“I look bloody stupid.”

Tracer, for the umpteenth time, voiced her disquiet at the attire she was required to wear.

“You’re going to a conference upon which teeters the state of healthcare around the entire globe,” Amélie said, deriving a good deal of humour at Tracer’s expense. “You’ll be rubbing shoulders with doctors, politicians, stock brokers—very rich and very powerful men and women. You can’t exactly walk in wearing a bomber jacket and bright-orange spandex.”

“It’s not _spandex_ ,” Tracer mumbled.

“Whatever you say. Turn around.”

She shot Amélie an indignant glare, and slowly turned her back to her with a huff. Amélie smoothed out wrinkles and discrepancies in the glittering red cloth of Tracer’s dress.

Hand-picked from a high-end formal boutique not far from their hotel, it shimmered and sparkled; another of Tracer’s complaints, mentioning with liberal use of curses and expletives how long it would take to get the glitter off of her hands. It was made of thick enough material that the glow from the stripped-down accelerator she wore underneath just below her sternum would be largely unnoticeable. The dress was backless, and sported a none-too-modest neckline.

Amélie was the one who chose it, after all.

“Why couldn’t I have just got a tux?”

“Because I said so. Okay, turn back around.”

Tracer turned around with all the liveliness and enthusiasm of a pouting child. Amélie tucked her lower lip under her teeth; she really did look quite beautiful.

“You look good. See for yourself.”

Tracer walked over to the mirror. Her hair had been straightened and swept to the side in a more formal style, the wild spiking completely gone. She pursed her lips, and contorted her face in displeasure.

“The straps are chafing my armpits.”

Amélie almost fell into a fit of laughter. “You poor thing. Here, put these on.”

Tracer looked Amélie’s way, and reacted in time to catch the high-heeled shoes that had been thrown to her. She held them at arm’s length, looking at them in genuine disgust.

She looked at Amélie out of the corners of her eyes. “I am not putting these on.”

“Would you stop being difficult?”

“We’re trying to catch hitmen, Amélie!”

Amélie sighed. She tossed her arms in the air and let them fall back against her sides, and she sauntered towards her. She took the shoes from her hand.

Tracer was about to looked relieved, when Amélie lurched into her and hooked a hand around her waist and into the low back of her dress. She jumped at the cold contact. Their bodies were flush together, and she could feel the heat of Amélie's breath on her lips as she spoke.

“I put a pair of flats in the purse I got you for later.” She felt the grip tighten around her. “ _Now_ _put the heels on, Lena.”_

Tracer swallowed with difficulty. "Good idea,” she complied, cursing herself for being so easily seduced. She reluctantly slipped them onto her feet—she was finally ready.

Amélie craned her neck to look at what the heels were doing an _excellent_ job of accentuating. The shoes were entirely unnecessary and completely for her own amusement, but she’d tell her that later. Maybe.

 

*******

 

Fareeha had spent the last five minutes smoothing out her sleeveless navy-blue silk shirt, and the black slacks that accompanied them.

She’d been to formal occasions before. Several events and banquets commemorating the tenure of high-ranking officials with Helix Security who’s names she had forgotten; correspondence dinners dedicated to her commanding officers when she was enrolled in the army, at which she was as comfortable as the people they were for. Which is to say, very superficially.

She wasn’t fond of events such as these, but was not vocal about it. Nowhere near as much as Tracer at least, but that was a given.

Angela emerged from the bathroom wearing a black, long-sleeve, shoulderless dress that covered her neck, and had an open back. She struck a pose, slightly bending her knee and making a wide gesture with her arms.

“You look lovely, Doctor Ziegler,” Fareeha said, veiling her discomfort with practiced stoicism.

“You don’t look half bad yourself! Remind me take you with me to events like these more often.”

Fareeha grunted an almost inaudible sound in reply. Angela led her to the mirror, and stood beside her.

She smoothed her hair and dress, and exhaled. She cocked her head at the reflection of the two of them with a small smile, before hooking her arm through Fareeha’s.

Much to Angela’s disbelief, the woman somehow stood even straighter.

She laughed. “Relax, Fareeha. You only have to escort me into the hall like this, and then I promise never to torture you in such a manner again.”

Fareeha grumbled once more. “Just remember, if anything goes wrong, run. Don’t look for me or Tracer, just get to safety as quickly as you can. Amélie will be outside on standby just in case.”

“Stop worrying. Everything will be fine, trust me. I’m in the very capable hands of Fareeha Amari, am I not?”

She paused momentarily, and giggled at her choice of words.

“What?” Fareeha asked.

“Oh nothing,” she deflected with a smile. “Shall we?”

 

*******

 

The conference hall was nearly packed wall-to-wall with people, with large circular tables interspersed throughout the crowd. Two massive, gaudy chandeliers hovered over the room beneath a glass ceiling, casting it in a warm yellow light. It took some time for Tracer to find Fareeha amidst the crowd.

“Hey.”

Fareeha lowered a glass of wine from her mouth. “Hey, ‘Aveline’.”

Angela had given Tracer a fake identity to go by for the night in case she was asked who she was; the presence of a widely recognized known former Overwatch agent at a conference of yet another known former Overwatch agent wouldn’t do much to keep them out of the public eye.

“I’ve got to say,” Fareeha went on, “as much as you hate it, you clean up quite nicely.”

“Thanks. So do you.” Tracer paused, and eyed the glass in Fareeha’s hand. “Should you be drinking?”

“We want to blend in, don’t we?”

She shrugged. “Fair enough.”

She returned after a short time with a glass in her hand, full to the brim. Fareeha’s eyes widened at the sight of it.

“You’re not going to blend in more the more you fill the glass, y’know.”

“What? Are you not supposed to fill it?”

“No, you’re supposed to pour like, a third of that. You’re dating a French woman, how can you not know this?”

“I don’t drink wine that much,” she said defensively, and sipped from the glass. Her face gnarled at its taste. “Oh, bugger me, that’s awful.”

Fareeha laughed as her friend, desperately out of her element, set the glass down on a table. Somewhere on a rooftop, she was certain Amélie laughed with her. Or rolled her eyes so far that her retinas detached.

She scanned the crowd for anyone out of the ordinary. A bald man was engaged in conversation with several people, mostly women. From what little she could gather from the distant talk, he’d invested a great deal of money into hard light in the virgin stages of its development, and the payout had been enormous. Another man with a beard down to his collarbone was standing beside an Omnic, making polite conversation. The Omnic was made of gold plating.

 _Even Omnics can be pretentious, it seems,_ she thought to herself.

She leaned down to whisper to Tracer. “Do you see anything?”

“No, not yet. I wonder how—”

Fareeha awaited a continuation. “Tracer—or, Aveline? Whatever your name is?”

“Four o’clock. Guy in the tuxedo with the short hair and the sun tattoo on his hand.”

Fareeha cautiously glanced at the man in question. He seemed innocuous enough, save for the telltale bulge beneath his coat that indicated he was carrying a firearm.

“That’s one of them, has to be,” Fareeha concurred. “He has a weapon. Jacket, left inside pocket.”

“Exactly. See anyone else?”

“Not yet. I’ll keep an eye out. In the meantime, don’t let him out of your sight.”

“On it.”

The two of them diverged. Tracer radioed Amélie through the communicator in her ear.

“Am, you there?”

“ _Yes_.”

“My eleven o’clock, few metres away. Tuxedo, short hair, tattoo on his left hand—see him?”

A short pause.

“ _Yes, I see him._ ”

“He has a gun in his left jacket pocket; repeat, left jacket pocket. That’s one of the hitmen. Not Jürgen, though. I’m gonna keep an eye on him, make sure you do too.”

“ _Understood. I will let you know if I see anyone else._ ”

“Copy.”

The evening dragged on. The hall had grown somewhat quieter, and people were settling into their seats. Tracer hadn’t let the man she was after escape her sight.

The first of the many guest speakers finally made an appearance; an Indian man with an ornate red turban, indicative of his wealth. He was the CEO of the newly-established nanotechnology branch of the Vishkar Corporation. At least, that’s what Tracer thought he had said—she was paying much more attention to the location of her suspect.

“ _Lena_.”

“Hold on,” she urged, waiting for a couple to walk far enough away from her until they were out of earshot. “Go.”

“ _I think I’ve found Jürgen. Seven o’clock. Hair’s tied in a ponytail; unkempt beard; white dress shirt with a black suit vest.”_

Tracer scanned for the man Amélie had described. “Found him. That’s definitely him. Where’s the weapon?”

“ _Same as the other. Pocket on the left side of his vest.”_

“Gotcha. Let Pharah know too.”

“ _Copy that._ _I believe it’s just the two of them, but stay on your toes._ ”

“Roger.”

Tracer noticed Fareeha getting into position behind Jürgen. They found one another’s gaze over the crowd, and discreetly nodded.

Tracer suddenly felt a hand on her shoulder, and almost jumped.

“Pardon me for startling you,” the man began, “but I feel like I know you from somewhere. Have we met before?”

Tracer hastened to respond. “No, sorry, I’m afraid we haven’t.”

“My apologies. Why don’t we change that?” He offered her a hand to shake. “Victor Coffey.”

The man looked less like a businessman and more like a reprobate in expensive clothing. She reluctantly reached for his hand. What was the name Angela told to her go by again?

“…Aveline Mills. Pleasure to meet you,” she said through a fake smile. He swept her hand up to his mouth, and kissed the back of it.

“Pleasure’s all mine,” he said.

Already rather nauseated, Tracer quickly cleared her mind, realizing it would be best to engage in at least some kind of conversation if she didn’t want to turn any heads.

“Very forward of you, Mister Coffey.”

“Please, call me Victor,” he began. “These are dangerous times we live in, Aveline. Being forward is all one has time for these days. One should not waste time on mindless banalities.”

“Very interesting point of view.”

“I’m glad you see it my way. In that case,” he retrieved a keycard from his pocket; light gleamed off the black strip on the card as he flashed it. “Shall we leave? The wine here isn’t much more than swill, if you ask me.”

Tracer nearly shuddered. It took a great deal of self-control not to.

“Thank you, but, I’m spoken for.”

“Darling, please—”

_Eugh…_

“I haven’t seen you with anyone all night,” he continued. “If they aren’t here with you, then surely they wouldn’t mind.”

“No thank you,” she tersely responded, growing more impatient.

She felt his hand on her back, and took a step forward to avoid it.

“ _Don’t_ touch me.”

“Aveline, be reasonable.” She felt his hand slip into the loose back of her dress. She whirled around, every fibre of her being screaming at her not to bury her knuckles into his teeth.

“Touch me again,” she whispered, just loud enough for only him to hear, “and I’ll break your _fucking_ fingers.”

He reeled back, as if she’d been the one to accost him. “Excuse me?”

“Did I stutter, _Victor?”_ She all but spat the name onto the floor. She waved her hand dismissively. “That’ll be all. Off you go, chop-chop.”

His face flush with anger, he turned after a brief hesitation and exited the hall.

“ _Lena, are you alright?”_ Amélie’s voice thrummed in her ear, a welcome change to her harasser’s.

“I’m fine, yeah. Almost asked you to shoot that guy.”

“ _I almost did.”_

“You’re a doll.” She looked back to the sea of people. “I’ve lost our guy, can you find him for me?”

“ _One moment… He’s seated two tables ahead and one table to the right. Do you see him?”_

Tracer followed the directions. “Yep, I got him. I think Angela’s up next. Be ready, and keep an eye on the doors in case one of them tries to split.”

“ _Copy that.”_

A man’s voice announced Angela’s name. It echoed throughout the massive room, quickly swallowed by applause. She walked across the stage to the podium, both graciously greeting the crowd and scanning it for threats. Not that anyone could have seen that, however, given that she masked it through a veil of elegance that came so naturally to her.

As she began her speech, Fareeha and Tracer kept their eyes glued to the men they were tracking. They began to shuffle in their seats; they were anxious. There was no doubt, even when there had been little before—it was them.

Tracer saw his hand move up to the firearm in his jacket. Fareeha’s target, Jürgen, did the same. They had to act.

“ _He’s got a gun!”_ Tracer yelled. “ _Everyone get down!_ ”

People turned to her in panic at the exclamation, and did as they were told. The hall erupted into a chorus of fearful shrieks and cries.

Tracer darted in between chairs, tables, and people cowering on the floor. The gunman fully turned to aim at her as she approached.

He fired a shot right as she reached him. She grabbed his wrist with one hand, forcing his arm down at the elbow with the other; the pistol shot into the air, cracking the glass above. She heaved a fist into his jaw and twisted his arm around behind his back, disarming him.

The other gunman, in a panic, switched his aim from Angela to Tracer and fired madly. The bullets tore into his compatriot, Tracer not having the time to throw him out of the way.

He was about to fire again when Fareeha slammed her foot into his chest, hitting him with enough force to send him sailing over the table and into the side of the next one across. She leapt over, smacking the weapon from his hand as he stood up and tried to raise it again. He grabbed an empty wine glass from the table and smashed it into her temple. She fell to the side, shouting and swearing as the man made for the exit.

“Pharah! Get Angie out of here!” Tracer shouted.

If Fareeha protested, Tracer didn’t hear it, as she was already out of the hall and after the gunman.

He shoved aside staff and decorations as he weaved towards an exit, dodging into and out of narrow hallways. She followed him into the kitchen, where he vaulted over the counter and threw open the exit door.

“Amélie, do you copy?”

“ _Yes, I’m here. Where’s he headed?”_

“Witzker Street! Eastbound!”

“ _Understood. Repositioning.”_

Tracer hurled down the street as fast as she could, the cold air biting at her face and eyes, and her exposed skin; she cursed the dress again, wishing that Amélie could have just gotten her a damn tuxedo.

She glanced across the street to her right, and just barely noticed a shadowy figure launching and vaulting from rooftop to rooftop, quickly overtaking her—Amélie was on the move.

Jürgen turned onto a side street, running north. Unknowingly, he’d just lined himself up perfectly through the sight of a sniper rifle.

Right as Tracer finished that thought, perfectly on schedule, a crack rolled across the sky behind her. A bullet flew through the air, and ripped into the side of the man’s calf. He fell to the ground with a cry.

He turned his head to find Tracer in a full-tilt sprint, approaching him faster than a tempest.

He grabbed a recycling bin from the curb, and hurled it at her with as much force as he could. In the brief moments Tracer took to leap over it and stumble back to her feet on the icy ground, he had regained his footing and set off again in a lopsided gallop.

Amélie couldn’t risk shooting again. They needed him alive.

Tracer shot her hand to her ear. “Pharah! Where are you right now?”

A beat.

_“Danger close!”_

The man reached the end of the block when someone speared into his midsection as hard as a logging truck, sending the two of them skidding across the frozen asphalt. He would have shouted in pain had the blow not knocked all traces of breath from his lungs.

“Holy shit! _Woohoo! Alright, Pharah!”_ Tracer cheered, throwing a fist into the air as she leapt from the sidewalk.

Fareeha grabbed the man by his head and forced it into the ground, pulling a zip-tie from her pocket with her free hand and binding his wrists. Angela emerged from the corner moments later, having trailed behind Fareeha.

“Nice work,” she applauded, out of breath. “We may want to get out of here now.”

“Couldn’t agree more,” Fareeha said. A worrying amount of blood trickled down the side of her head, but she paid it no mind. “Alright, Jürgen, up you go.”

“My name is Sebastian! Sebastian Heimsoff!" he cried as he was hoisted from the road. "You have the wrong guy!”

“Whatever you say.”

They began on their way, urgently escorting their new “guest”. The police would arrive shortly, and being arrested was far from their best interests.

Jürgen paled upon noticing Amélie. She shot him a glare, analyzing him. He shied away, refusing to meet her narrowing eyes.

“He’s a Talon agent,” she said coldly.

“What?” Fareeha asked. “How can you tell?”

“He recognized me. He’s a new recruit, though; hasn’t been with them for long.”

Fareeha stood in front of him, stopping him cold. She towered over him by half a head. His stature felt even further dwarfed by her narrow, scrutinizing glare.

“He have a tracker on him?” she asked.

“Left side of his jaw, below his ear,” Amélie replied. She drew a knife from the sheathe strapped to her thigh and handed it to Fareeha.

He tried to lean back from it in fear. Fareeha grabbed his jaw and made a shallow incision where Amélie had described. He sucked air through his teeth, clenched in pain.

She pulled out a small black chip with a blinking red light and crushed it before him between her thumb and forefinger.

“Nobody’s coming for you now, Jürgen.”


	6. Interrogation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Angela sees to Fareeha's injury. McCree presses Jürgen for information.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alright, so, uploads may be a little more sporadic for the next couple days because I don't have my laptop with me for a little bit. Just letting you guys know ahead of time.

McCree all but threw Jürgen into the interrogation room. Occupied by two folding chairs, a stainless steel bowl in the corner, and a one-way window, it offered only the most basic neccessities.

None-too-harsh parsimony, given that he did try—albeit poorly—to kill Lena and Angela.

“Sorry, it’s a mite under-furnished," McCree chided. "Let me know if you have any ideas for sprucing it up.”

He slammed shut the steel door and locked it with a metallic _clack_. He turned to Fareeha who stood behind him, and brushed his hands together, pretending to clap dust from his palms.

“All locked up. Hope he enjoys the suite. How’s the head doin’?”

Fareeha reached up to touch the wound, in all honesty having forgotten about it. “Oh, right. Looks worse than it feels, I’ll be fine.”

“Ana’s gonna have your ass,” he said with a smile, striking a match to light a cigar.

Fareeha sighed, and nodded silently. She turned and left the room to the sound of McCree’s laughter.

“Good luck!”

Hopefully, she’d make it to Angela’s office without running into her mother—she would much rather avoid the inevitable lecturing. It was out of worry, she knew, but that did little to make it less exhausting to endure.

She was glad to have her back. More than that—ecstatic. Ana was, however, still her mother, and as worrisome as ever.

She was lucky enough to remain undetected. As soon as she slipped into the room, her head began to ache and sting, as if suddenly agitated by the room itself. Angela walked out from the small supply cupboard at the back, having simply thrown her labcoat over her dress.

“Ah, Fareeha. I was just getting everything ready. How do you feel?”

“Not bad, for someone with a shard of glass lodged in their head.”

Angela laughed at the remark. “Glad to hear it.”

Fareeha took a seat on the examination table. Angela dipped a ball of gauze into a bottle of antiseptic, and dabbed it on Fareeha’s temple. It stung fiercely.

“I’m sorry this happened to you,” Angela said, breaking the silence. “I would have prevented it, had I known it would happen.”

“Not your fault. Occupational hazard I suppose, though I think ‘wine glasses’ must have been in the fine print when I signed up.”

Angela laughed again, song-like and prettily. Fareeha pondered briefly on how much she enjoyed the sound of it.

She quickly shook the thought from her mind, scolding herself.

_Professionalism, Amari._

“I’m just glad no-one else was hurt.”

“So am I,” Angela replied. “As much as I prefer to avoid violence, if it had to happen to somebody, I suppose I might have chosen the man harassing Lena.”

“What? She hadn’t told me about that.”

“Mhm. I caught a few glimpses of their exchange before I went up to give my speech.”

“And?”

“Wasn’t long before he stormed out. Lena has a way with words, I dare say.”

“Ha. Where is she, by the way?”

“I believe I heard Amélie say something about wanting to rip a dress off.”

“Oh.”

Angela set the last stitch in place, and spread a cold bonding gel on Fareeha’s lacerated temple. She taped a bandage in place over it, concluding the treatment.

“All patched up. You’re free to go.”

“Thank you, Doctor,” Fareeha said, and stood from the examination table. She was about to open the door when Angela’s voice stopped her.

“Thank _you_ , Fareeha.” Fareeha turned fully around to face her. “Thank you for coming with me tonight, and for your concern. If you hadn’t been there, I doubt it would have gone as well.”

Angela strode up to her, and placed a hand on where her neck joined her shoulder.

“And I much prefer it when you call me Angela. Strangers refer to me as ‘Doctor’, and you’re anything but.”

Fareeha offered her a reserved smile in return, and thanked her complexion, otherwise she might have been betrayed by the redness that pervaded her face when she noticed Angela’s eyes very briefly glance down, before joining her own again.

“Of course,” she said. “Goodnight, Angela.”

“Goodnight, Fareeha.”

She leaned on the door as it closed behind her, and puffed out her cheeks with an exhale. She swore she could have heard Angela giggling again.

_Dammit, Fareeha, be quieter._

 

*******

 

The sound of the door opening jolted Jürgen from a restless sleep.

He tried to run a hand over his face out of reflex, but quickly recalled that his hands were bound. He lifted his head to the door, his gaze groggy and eyes lidded.

He suddenly felt much more awake at the sight of a gleaming, thick-bladed knife in McCree’s hand. His face paled, and his eyes halted on the shimmering blade

“Calm down, I ain’t gonna hurt ya,” McCree deigned to say. He took the man’s trembling hands and cut the bindings from them, and held a bowl in front of him that Jürgen hadn’t noticed at first.

“Here’s breakfast. Enjoy,” he said hollowly.

Jürgen took the bowl, wasting no time in wolfing down the tasteless meal. McCree pulled up the other chair and sat in front of him, courteously waiting for the man to finish.

“So,” he began, “Talon, eh?”

Silence.

“Quite the step up from a Blackwatch informant.”

Silence again.

McCree leaned back in his chair. “It was Reaper, wasn’t it? The one who gave the order?” He waited, listening for a response that he wasn’t going to get. “C’mon, you must know who I’m talking about. Black cloak? Mask that kinda makes him look like an owl goin’ through a goth phase? Can pull out shotguns outta who-knows-where? Am I ringing any bells here?”

“Piss off.”

McCree smiled a venomous smile. “Y’know, I think it’s best that you answer my questions.”

“Is that so?”

“Well, yeah.” His reply was accompanied by a shrug. “You don’t want me bringin’ Widowmaker in here, do you? They must’ve told you about her by now.” He paused to light a cigar, striking a match on the floor. “Quite the prolific lady, far as assassinations are concerned.”

Jürgen straightened at the name’s utterance. The spoon danced on the rim of the bowl, violently shaking in his hands.

McCree flicked ashes from his cigar. “Here’s what’s gonna happen, Jürgen…”

He pulled his chair closer and leaned forward, far enough to force the terrified man across from him to lean away in fear.

“You’re gonna answer _every_ goddamn question I ask you, and you are gonna answer ‘em concisely and truthfully. Simple as that. Understood?”

He received quick nodding in response.

“Good.” McCree leaned back in his seat. “Now; Reaper sent you instead of going himself—why?”

“Convenience,” Jürgen shakily began. “I was already in Hannover.”

“What was he doing that was so important that he outsourced this to you?”

“Last I heard, he was in South America looking for someone by the name of Sombra. Some hacker-turned-folk hero.”

“Why?”

“Apparently she’s an associate of his. She’s infamous for data mining, intrusion—you name it. He wants dirt on Overwatch, and if anybody can get it, it’s her. Talon’s been trying to keep tabs on her, but they won’t find her unless she wants them to.”

“Where in South America?”

“Dorado.”

McCree exhaled, and took a moment to process the information. This was bad—Reaper with an elusive, highly-skilled hacker at his beck and call could, and would, bring about a lot of trouble.

He decided to move on. “Where does Talon operate out of?”

“Nowhere in particular. They haven't built another base since their last one got destroyed. Just a bunch of nomadic cells left right now.”

“How do I know you’re not lying?”

Jürgen narrowed his eyes at McCree—like he was shocked that he didn't already know the answer.

“Because Widowmaker fucking terrifies me. Why would I lie?”

McCree chuckled. “Smarter than I thought. I think we’re done for now.” He stood, and swiped the bowl from Jürgen’s hands. “Thanks for your time.”


	7. Gone

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jack, Ana, Amélie and Tracer head to Dorado to try and track down Sombra, and by extension, Reaper.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ALLOW ME TO EXPLAIN:
> 
> A couple days ago, someone needed my laptop for a job they were doing (my laptop is higher-spec than theirs and they needed a specific program). I said in the end-of-chapter notes of chapter 5 or 6 that uploads would be sporadic.
> 
> WASN'T REALLY THINKING ABOUT IT AT THE TIME SO IT DIDN'T IMMEDIATELY DAWN UPON ME THAT THERE WAS LITERALLY NO WAY FOR ME TO UPLOAD CHAPTERS WITHOUT IT SO I FUCKED UP A LITTLE BIT HAHAHAHA OOPSIE-POOPSIE
> 
> Anyway, to make up for lost time, I'm gonna upload a bunch of lengthy-ass chapters here. Sorry about the wait everyone!

Jack leapt from one rooftop to the other, clearing the alley below with minimal effort. Surprising, given his age; men with a similar number of years behind them would most likely not be waging wars and flying around the world as masked vigilantes.

Nor would women the same age as Ana, yet here they both were, showing no signs of slowing down. She bounded across the same gap, regrouping with Jack.

McCree had briefed them on the information he had gathered from Jürgen. Someone as vengeful and lethal as Reaper coupled with someone as deceptive as whoever the hell Sombra was spelled disaster, plain as day. Hence why Jack had been the first to volunteer.

He knew the area well; his clashes with the Los Muertos street gang were many, leaving him with more awareness of the area than anyone else. Whether or not the real reason he volunteered at all was to have a chance at Reaper—at Gabe—and mete out some revenge of his own remained to be seen. Nobody asked. Nobody wanted to. Save for Ana, but there was a time and place.

Admittedly, her reasons for volunteering were not purely altruistic either, but she too met no resistance. She had to get back in the field at some point anyway. “No time like the present,” she had said.

She wanted to see what Amélie was like. She wanted to see if the woman could earn her trust again. A mission was a better place than most to do just that.

So, Amélie accompanied them, surprised that it had been at Ana’s behest. Tracer insisted that she, too, tag along. At the very least, to keep Amélie at ease. She wasn’t one for sitting still for too long, anyway.

“You kids coming?” Jack jibed.

Tracer blinked across the rooftops in a blue haze, Amélie on her heels.

“Ha ha,” she replied dryly.

“Power plant’s this way. Let’s get a move on.”

Newspaper articles, local news headlines, and hearsay lead them to the LumériCo Power Plant, one of the many ziggurats that dotted the city’s landscape. There had recently been a massive security breach of the company’s network that leaked incriminating files and emails to the masses; a number high enough not to shake a stick at, either.

Sombra seemed to fit the bill. That was their best and only lead. If they were lucky, they would find something there.

They gathered on the corner of a rooftop overlooking the shipping yard at LumériCo’s rear entrance.

“Doors are closed and the lights are off,” Ana said. “I don’t think anyone is home.”

“Good,” Jack said. “Tracer, you’re with me. Ana, head up to that bell tower behind us, the view will be good from up there. Amélie, take up a firing position on that building there, get overlapping sightlines.” He gestured towards a rooftop two buildings away from them, more elevated than the one upon which they stood. “The two of you keep your eyes peeled on the shipping yard. If either of you see any activity, radio it in. I don’t care if it’s a kid with a cap gun—I wanna know about it.”

The two nodded, and bounded off to the perches they’d been assigned. Tracer flicked her pistols out from her gauntlets, and gave Jack a wink before hopping off the roof.

 

*******

           

Stray leaves flicked and arced through the air in irregular circles; waves lapped at the shore, licking at it as if the ocean itself hungered; the scent of sea salt filled her lungs. They were simple pleasures, true, but Ana had missed them.

She scanned the shipping yard for any signs of presence. Massive steel containers stood sentinel at the equally large doors at the back of the building, and vans and cargo trucks laid around the yard as if they’d been strewn about, but not a soul stirred. She kept her vigil all the same.

She was not able to see Amélie from her position. She had to admit that a part of her grew anxious at the absence. Her distrust of the woman may have been unjustified, and perhaps she was simply being paranoid. After all, Winston himself had called her family. But she could not shake the feeling, no matter how much she wanted to. Not with Overwatch in the mix. Not with Fareeha.

She put a finger to her ear. “Come in, Amélie.”

_“I read you.”_

“How are things looking on your end?”

_“Quiet, so far. Nothing yet. Lovely night, though.”_

“That it is.”

There was a momentary pause. Ana guessed at what was coming next.

_“I owe you an apology, Ana. One very long overdue.”_

She guessed correctly.

“For the eye? Not to worry. It’s a good reminder.”

She winced at the condescension she heard in her own voice—how harsh it had sounded when she had not meant it so. A pang of regret struck her.

“That was cruel. Forgive me. We should talk about this another time.”

“… _Right, of course.”_

Ana pretended to ignore the dispiritedness of Amélie’s tone.

Jack’s voice growled in her ear, perfectly in time to end their awkward conversation.

“ _We got something in here. It ain’t good.”_

 

*******

 

Jack lifted the loading door. He and Tracer swooped under and promptly swept the room, weapons raised. Empty.

Jack gestured his head towards a hallway to their left, and held three fingers up to her. He rotated his hand downward and made a circular motion. Tracer nodded, indicating that she understood the order for a three-metre spread between them.

They turned into the hallway and advanced, Jack at the point, Tracer behind him. They forged on with methodical, deliberate steps, silent on the steel floor.

They found themselves in a control room, awash in blue light emitting from the numerous sizeable monitors on the walls and desks. They showed fluctuations in the city’s power draw in graphs, the red lines on the screens wavering like windblown threads. The information proved useless; neither Jack nor Tracer spoke Latin American Spanish—not that that was what they were looking for in any case.

Tracer laid her pistols down on a tabletop and began rifling through papers. She found three folders buried underneath.

“Jack? You may want to come see this.”

He peered out of the room to make sure they were alone, then joined Tracer at the table. She laid a finger on one of the folders.

“What the hell…” he growled.

Stamped on the folders’ faces in red ink were “SOMBRA [CLASIFICADO],” “SOLDADO: 76 [CLASIFICADO],” and, most disturbingly, “JACK MORRISON [CLASIFICADO]”. A picture of a young man was attached to the Jack Morrison file by a paper clip.

It was him. Before the explosion in Sweden. What was LumériCo doing with photos and classified files of him?

He called Ana immediately. “We got something in here. It ain’t good.”

“ _What did you find?”_

“LumériCo has classified files on Sombra, Soldier: 76, and Jack Morrison. There’s a picture of me here with it.”

“ _What does LumériCo want with you? They’re an energy company.”_

“Beats the hell outta me, but that’s not important right now. What is, is that this must have been what Sombra hacked into their systems to get. Reaper could already have it by now.”

_“Damn it…”_

“Wait,” Jack said, brushing aside the files and more papers. “There’s another file here.”

“LENA ‘TRACER’ OXTON [CLASIFICADO]” was stamped on the front in the same fashion as the others.

“They’ve got one on Tracer, too.”

Tracer snatched the file from his hand, and began flipping through its contents. Strangely enough, there was very little information about her personally.

“Most of this is about my accelerator,” she stated. “This is getting _right_ creepy.”

“Let’s get to the archives, maybe they’ll have something we can—“

The lighting in the room turned from blue to dark red. Tracer pulled her pistols from the table and spun about-face, aiming around the room. Jack whirled around, rifle at the ready, doing the same.

A red bar was sprawled across the centre of all the monitors. In it was a message.

“ _He was just stopping by to pick those up.”_

Tracer looked at Jack, and then the lights went out.

The darkness snarled at them. The voice was disembodied, coming from everywhere at once.

“Die,” it hissed.

The two of them scattered. The room illuminated in blasts of light, brought on by the muzzle flashes of Reaper’s shotguns.

“Reaper’s in the building!” Jack shouted into his earpiece. “He had Sombra cut the power! _Get the hell in here now!”_

“That’s right, Jack,” Reaper growled. “Call your friends. The more the merrier.”

Jack fired back blindly, casting the larger room the fighting had spilled out into in flashes of blue light.

Tracer blinked towards Reaper. He saw the blue flashes in his periphery, and turned to aim. She kicked the weapons from his hands and fired at his centre of mass.

Or where it had been, at least, as he had already materialized behind her. She spun, and a knee drove into her stomach. She doubled over and stumbled backwards, diving out of the way only just in time when he had drawn two more shotguns from his belt and fired again wildly.

More shots rang out. Bullets and biotic syringes tore through the air and slammed into his back. Amélie and Ana had arrived.

“Cavalry’s here!” Ana shouted.

“Oh, you did _not_ just do that, Cap!” Tracer yelled out in response. “Somebody get the power back on!”

Amélie’s arachnidan visor closed over her eyes. The control room was opposite from her, across the room in which the battle raged.

She launched the grappling hook from her gauntlet, firing it past Reaper’s head by inches. She propelled towards him like a shot and caught him in the jaw with her heel as she zipped past, throwing him to the floor with a thud.

She flew into the control room, and quickly located the power switch. She pushed the lever upwards, and the room flooded with white light. Jack and Ana converged on Reaper.

Jack dug his shoulder into Reaper’s stomach as he stood, slamming him back into the cold steel floor. He smashed the butt of his rifle into Reaper’s mask, shattering it, revealing half a row of teeth in a gnarled, angry grimace.

Reaper wrapped his hand around Jack’s throat and pulled his face into his forehead, before planting his feet on his chest, propelling him off and into a nearby wall. He spun on the ground and hurled his leg outwards, trying to sweep Ana from her feet as she closed in.

She deftly leapt over it and landed on his opposite side, rolling back to her feet. She fired twice more into his chest. He barked in pain, but went up in a cloud of smoke, reappearing some feet away with weapons in hand. Black vapour rolled out across the floor beneath him, and he fired indiscriminately.

Everyone dove for cover—bullets ricocheted off every surface, cutting angular swathes of death through the air.

He dissipated into a cloud, snatched the file folders from the table in the control room, and fled the building in a gust of cold, roiling black smoke.

Just like that, it was over.

Nobody spoke. Only exerted breathing could be heard.

“Everyone alright?” Jack called out.

“Yes, I’m fine,” Ana responded.

“I am as well,” said Amélie.

Tracer threw a hand out from the pillar she had been hiding behind. “All good here,” she said, exasperated, and let her hand fall against her leg.

The four of them regrouped in the centre of the room. They brushed themselves off, and slung their weapons away.

“Does he ever run out of guns?” Tracer asked. “Seriously, like, where does he even get them from?”

Amélie laughed at the quip. Jack and Ana just stared at her in stunned silence.

“What?” she asked, quickly growing worried.

“Look,” Ana said. Barely a whisper—a grim murmur. She gestured to Tracer’s chest.

Her head shot down. She went paler than snow.

A stray bullet had struck her chronal accelerator, dead centre. The glass was cracked open, and the blue light had died.

It was destroyed.

She looked to Amélie, who had not noticed it until then either.

“No.” Tracer stepped back. She shook her head with rising disparity. “No, no, no.”

“Lena?” The name seemed to catch in Amélie’s throat.

“Am—Am, please.”

Amélie ran to her, and, not knowing what else to do, held her as tightly as she could.

“Please don’t let me go…” Tears welled in Tracer’s eyes, despondent and terrified. “I can’t do this. I can’t do this. Please, Amélie, for god’s sake, _help me_.”

Amélie nodded. “W-we’ll get you back to Winston. He can fix it. Everything will be fine, we just have to get home. Come on, we have to get moving.”

She turned her head to Ana and Jack. They saw the futility in the plan. They had not moved, their expressions had not changed.

How could they have already given up hope?

“Don’t stand there, we have to go now! We can still help her, we have—”

Amélie lurched forward, and a dull thud resonated throughout the room.

Tracer had vanished from her very hands. The accelerator lay lifelessly on the floor.

Amélie could deny and refuse all she wanted. This was no dream. Not even a nightmare.

She had told her that she would never let this happen to her again. She promised her. She _promised_ , and she _failed_.

There was nothing she could do, now.

Tracer was gone.


	8. Grey

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> With Tracer cast adrift on the waves of time, the world seems just a little bit bleaker...

The three of them had been dreading the delivery of Tracer's vanishing to the others right up unitl the very moment they walked in the front door. As usual, their return was awaited in the lobby.

Nobody paid it any mind at first that Tracer was absent. They had nothing to worry about; she always came back. She was probably just outside.

“Where’s Tracer?” they asked. “What’s she doing?” they asked.

Amélie said nothing. The rattling of the broken accelerator clutched to her chest, rising and falling arrhythmically with erratic breathing, spoke volumes louder.

They all shot Jack and Ana looks of disbelief, as if waiting to be proven wrong. Ana’s gaze was locked to the floor. Jack removed his mask, and simply shook his head.

She’s gone.

Nobody said a word, moved a muscle, made a sound. Nothing.

Winston slowly walked up to Amélie, being the first to do anything other than standing painfully still in what everyone was certain was a long time. Words escaped him as they had everyone else.

She tore the accelerator from her chest with all the difficulty of ripping her own heart out—she may as well have been doing just that—and held it out to him.

He took it in his hands. He stared in its centre for a time, as if he could will her back into existence.

He said nothing. He leapt up to his lab, accelerator in hand.

Amélie, too, left for her room. Everyone simply watched her go.

 

*******

 

A knock came on the door.

“Come in,” Amélie said through a cracked voice, her throat sore and scratched from sobbing. Truthfully, she didn’t want anybody entering, but she didn’t feel right turning them away.

Ana entered, and...

For the second time since her return to Overwatch, all her preparation for an inevitable conversation would prove pointless.

Amélie was on her bed, arms wrapped around her legs, curled up to her chest. Her back leaned against the wall. She rocked slowly, ever slowly.

She was broken. She was a broken woman.

Ana had seen people break before; a man, reduced to cries and dejected spasms, mourning a family he returned home to not a day before in a normal life; an Omnic, his lifeless friend in his lap, forcing the barrel of a firearm wielded by some naïve teenager who thought he was fighting the good fight, into his forehead, begging, _daring_ him, to pull the trigger—to this day, she didn’t know who to pity more between the two of them.

This was different. In a subtle way, but altogether different regardless. She could not have prepared herself for it, no matter how much she thought she could.

She sat beside her without a word. For what felt like hours, she rolled words around in her mouth, trying to muster something to say.

_Enough. Just start talking. Say anything._

She breathed a sigh.

“I distrusted you,” she began abruptly. Amélie looked at her, though Ana did not meet that penetrating gaze.

“When I first saw you, after I’d arrived, I thought ‘What is _she_ doing here? Among my family?’ Winston assured me you _were_ family, but I never fully believed it. I tried, but some part of me just wouldn’t let it come to pass.

“I thought you would betray us. That you would bring harm to my Fareeha, and to the others, but… You love Lena. You love her unconditionally. Just as you love every person here. You’re dedicated to them all, no matter what.”

Ana finally turned to look at Amélie, who had not said a word. Ana silently thanked her for that.

“I’m sorry… That it took something like this happening for me to realize that.”

She pulled her close, and gently rested Amélie’s head against her shoulder. “I trust you, Amélie. You are my family, and I am yours. And I promise you; as sure as the sun rises, we will get her back.”

 

*******

 

Angela sat hunched over her desk, her forehead resting in her palm. Dark rings had formed under her eyes; she had been chasing this conundrum almost uninterrupted for seventy-two hours.

She heard the door open behind her, with Fareeha in its absence.

“Oh. Hello, Fareeha. Did you need something?”

“I need you to get some sleep,” Fareeha said. “You’ve been glued to that chair for three days.”

“I’m close,” she pleaded exhaustedly. “I just need a little more time.”

Fareeha sighed. Angela was very set in her ways, sometimes. “It won’t work, Angela.”

“Yes it will,” she responded.

“You can’t do this alone.”

“I can and I will, if I have to!” She shouted with an uncharacteristic ferocity. Her face quickly flushed, grimacing in her inability to cull the frustration in her voice.

“Sorry… I’m sorry, Fareeha. That was rude.”

“It’s alright. You’re very stressed. We all are. But I need you to realize that this isn’t something that can be done by one single person, let alone if it can be done at all.”

She took a step forward. “You have to let this go. There’s other ways to bring her back; Winston did it once before already. This is a… Quantum problem, not a medical problem. Sleep deprivation, however, _is_ a medical problem.”

Angela swiveled in her chair to face Fareeha.

Angela looked beautifully sad. Stunningly distraught. The darkness under her eyes; the lethargic movements of her hands; the want of sleep, ignored by either determination or stubbornness, or both… They did not suit that face. No matter how many times they had been plastered upon it over the years, Fareeha never got used to seeing it. Seeing Angela this way made her feel… Pained? Distressed?

Pained. It pained her to see her torture herself like this.

Angela arose from her seat and sluggishly walked across the room to Fareeha. She wrapped her arms around her, languorously. Fareeha did the same in return.

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. It isn’t your fault.”

Angela sniffled. She was on the precipice of a breakdown—there was now another person she wouldn't be able to save.

But it wasn't "another person". It wasn't just a stranger whose health and well-being did genuinely matter to her, but whom she did not know personally. It was Lena.

It was _Lena_ , dammit.

She suddenly felt an arm tuck under her knees, and her feet lifted from the floor. Fareeha carried her towards her room, determined to see that her friend got the rest she needed.

“Seems like the patient has become the doctor,” Fareeha said with a smirk, hoping that saying at least something could lighten her mood.

Angela exhaled a sad and tired laugh, and tucked her head into the slope of Fareeha’s neck, finally entertaining the desire she felt for closeness to her in a lapse of either judgement or care. Fareeha felt heat rise under her skin.

_What am I doing?_

The door opened, and Fareeha carefully stepped inside, mindful of anything she might bump the good doctor into on accident. She tactfully laid her on the bed.

She lifted long, straw-blonde strands of hair from Angela’s face. “Goodnight, Angela. Sleep well.”

She turned to leave when a hand caught her wrist.

“Stay.”

Fareeha stiffened. “I—”

“Please.”

She sighed. She thought about declining, but if she were being honest, she probably needed it as much as Angela did.

“Okay,” she agreed. “Scooch over, you’re taking up the entire bed.”


	9. Captive

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tracer phases back into reality. Ironically, to her own dismay.

Tracer recognized this. The nothingness was distinctive, somehow. It was all too familiar.

This was it. The abyss she so commonly found herself in when she dreamt. When her mind would conjure up her greatest fear and make her watch it, relive it, in some sick and twisted game. This is where it would take her.

Only this time, it was real. It _felt_ dreamlike, drifting endlessly, but it was oh so real, so horrifyingly real.

She was scared. She was scared, and she was alone. Her heart pounded against her ribcage like a sledgehammer.

The darkness began to shimmer—melt and mold into shapes. What was happening?

She slowly began to recognize the surroundings. London. King’s Row. The night of Mondatta’s speech. A woman, bereft of emotions, possessed of acute killer instincts in their place. A young, cheerful British girl—her polar opposite, irrepressibly good-natured.

It was her own self. Amélie was there too, from before she’d defected.

Tracer recalled that night. How potent her failure had felt. How cold Amélie had been.

She thought of her now; personable, caring, beautiful…

She missed her. She missed everyone. She missed home.

The image began to fade. It was a memory of a darker time, one that she could only view as an outsider exiled from her own mind, but it was something she could perceive. It provided comfort, but now it flickered away.

The blackness shimmered again. She felt herself falling, plummeting for miles and miles into an unknown.

She blinked into existence, gasping for air, clutching and clawing at anything she could. She was in a domed, grey steel chamber. Red nodes dotted the ceiling. It, too, was familiar.

This was where she was kept whenever she would blink back into reality, when her Chronal Disassociation was first diagnosed.

This was not another memory, however. This was real.

_Where am I?_

Large rectangular windows revealed a small laboratory beyond. A team of scientists were gathered around a holographic monitor, hunched over and dissecting quantum data. Thank god; someone was trying to bring her back! Maybe Winston had called in some favours with old colleagues to help save her.

She pressed her hands to the glass, though she could not feel its touch. One of the scientists turned and almost jumped out of his skin at the sight of her. She suppressed the urge to laugh.

The others walked over and gathered around her, staring at her as if she were some circus act. She felt uncomfortable under their scrutiny. They parted slightly; the two figures she saw standing at the door made her stomach sink.

Talon mercenaries.

It was Talon. Talon was trying to bring her back.

She was at their every whim, powerless.

She backed away from the window, shaking her head in refusal to believe that something like this could be happening. For the first time, she wanted desperately to be drifting in the ether of time once again.

_This can’t be happening… This can’t be happening…_

One of the scientists gave her a venomous, sickening grin, as if he found her plight amusing. He stared, and stared, and stared, until she faded from reality again. His gaze would vex her no more, but… What would happen next? These people were unhinged, certifiably insane—

And it dawned on her that she was no longer just time’s plaything. She was theirs, now, too.

 

*******

 

The next time she phased into existence, she noticed that they were testing something. She approached the window to get a better look.

Two soldiers were holding a man by his arms. He writhed and shook and screamed, but he could not escape. He was wearing something akin to a hospital gown.

He was a prisoner. They were using him as a guinea pig.

One of the scientists approached the quivering man and placed something on him over his head. A harness.

A chronal accelerator. It was made of a dark grey metal, and the light in its centre shone red instead of the soothing blue she was used to.

She looked to her left to find the same scientist as before staring at her again. She recoiled away from the glass upon seeing him, wishing to remain as far away from him as possible.

He approached the window, and smiled again. He smiled, and smiled, and smiled, and stared, and stared, and stared. Only when his cohorts activated the accelerator did he remove his eyes from her. He moved aside, so that she had a full view of the experiment.

The light in the harness shone brighter and spun to life. The man contorted in pain and fell into the floor in a fit of uncontrollable spasms, electricity coursing through his body. Foam surged from his mouth.

_That’s what they’re going to do to me—keep me in line with shock therapy like an animal…_

The scientists hastened to remove it from him. Most of them did, at least. Tracer’s “admirer” looked on in glee, reveling in the pain the man must have been feeling. He was—he was actually _shaking_ in excitement.

She watched in unbridled horror. She knew Talon was evil, but…

These weren’t men.

These were monsters.

When he turned back to look at her, she had vanished again.

Drifting alone, all she could do was think.

_Save me. Somebody save me. Amélie, Winston, anybody. I can’t be here any longer. I’m scared. Scared beyond words._

_Please. Hurry._

 

*******

 

Reality, again.

Sometimes when she would phase in, she would sit in silence, huddled as far away from the windows as the chamber allowed. All she could hear were muffled voices and the gentle mechanical whirring of the chronal chamber, and the systems beyond it at which the team of scientists worked tirelessly.

Other times she would reappear right in time to see yet another display of ruthless brutality, as Talon strapped their harness to a different prisoner each time with varying degrees of success. Sometimes the test subjects would blink about the room at the whim of the accelerator, completely powerless as it threw them into walls and consoles with alarming force. Other times the volts of electricity would be either too mild or too severe for Talon’s needs, so they would adjust it accordingly while the person was still wearing it.

But every single time, without failure, that one man would just smile and stare at her. Smile and stare. Smile and stare. It was all he did.

The others would scold him and put him back to work. He would begrudgingly oblige, but whenever he finished whatever task he was assigned, he would go right back to the window and smile and stare.

Tracer didn’t know his name, so she took to calling him “Bat”, given that he was very evidently batshit insane.

She noticed the scientists cowering away from the entrance, turning back to their computers. She turned to see who it was that caused them such deep distress.

Reaper. She just became angry at the sight of him.

She went to the window. He approached as well, silently, staring at her from behind his mask.

“This is all your fault!” she screamed, loudly enough and angrily enough that she could be sure he could hear her from behind the thick glass. “You did this to me, you _son of a bitch_ _!”_

Reaper said nothing. He simply laughed piteously.

“Yeah, laugh it up, you twat! Hide behind your stupid mask all you want, while you still can!”

Reaper cocked his head. How quaint it was that she thought she could threaten him. He reached a hand up to his face, and pulled the mask from it.

“Nobody’s hiding, girl.”

It took a great deal of discipline not to revolt in fear at his visage. A crooked grin revealed a row of sharpened teeth from behind scarred and torn lips. His face flaked off the bone, turning into ash as it decayed, and grew back just as quickly. Thick, coiled tails of black smoke flicked and seeped from his hood. His gaze was abyssal, his eyes as dark as the void.

She just kept staring. Anger overpowered rational fear.

“I’m not afraid of you,” she hissed. “Nobody is.”

“Maybe not of me,” he returned, muscle and bone peering through the gaps in his cracked and charred skin. “But you _are_ afraid.”

He donned his mask again, and left the room. She turned away, only to come face-to-face with Bat again.

“When I get out of here,” she said, shaking, “and I _will_ get out, you better _pray_ that I don’t find you.”

“On the contrary,” he responded in a tone that was much too eager, “I pray that you do.” He licked his lips as they turned upwards into his trademark wolfish grin.

Tracer just shot him a glare that said much more than she could hope to verbalize. A glare that said he was sick beyond comprehension; that praying for her to find him was a mistake he was either too pretentious or too bloody barmy to realize.


	10. Answers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Some disturbing information about Tracer comes to light.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Gonna try and upload another chapter later tonight.

“Mornin', big fella.”

McCree entered Winston's lab with a plate of food in his hand. He was the first to see Winston in six days. Seven, now, actually; the poor downtrodden scientist had been working to fix the chronal accelerator without pause.

“Oh. Good morning, Jesse.”

“Hungry?”

“Yes, but I would prefer to keep working for now.”

“Sure thing. It’s here when you need it.”

Winston grumbled a nigh-incoherent thank you. He spoke to McCree without looking away from the accelerator on the bench. He had probably not seen a second of sleep ever since Amélie returned with it.

“Is it workin’ again?” McCree uncomfortably inquired.

“Almost. I just need to make a few more adjustments.”

“How are we going to get it on her?”

“I don’t know yet. We’ll figure something out.”

“We’d need one of those chronal chamber things,” McCree said in a tone bordering on pleading, hoping that Winston could see the futility of his current endeavor.

“Then I’ll build one,” Winston growled—he had caught the attempt to dissuade him.

“We don’t have the resources. I’m sorry, man, but I don’t think—“

Winston whirled around in his chair. “What? You don’t think what? That we can do this? That we can save her? That we should even _try?_  You may give up if you please, but I’m not going to.”

“Hey, I never said anything about giving up. You know that if there was a way, I’d take it no matter what. I just… I don’t see one.”

“We can—” Winston paused to consider possibilities. His hands seemed to grasp at something, some vestige of an idea. “What if we—”

His fists clenched so hard that they began to shake. He let out a defeated sigh, and tossed the screwdriver in his hand onto the bench before him, letting his forehead fall into his palms.

“I don’t know. I don’t know what to do…”

“I have an idea.”

Winston’s and McCree’s heads snapped to the monitor on which was displayed Athena’s emblem. She was the one that spoke up.

“Go on,” Winston urged curiously, glancing passingly at McCree.

“Ever since Miss Oxton’s disappearance, I’ve been monitoring for chronal anomalies—trying to see where she would end up, and if her reappearances held to any sort of pattern so we could track her. My scans revealed this not moments ago, originating from somewhere in the Swiss Alps.”

She projected analytics onto Winston’s monitor. A graph showed quantum distortions, similar in a way to the results of measurements that contemporary physicists took near artificially-constructed singularities to further the understanding of Black Hole Theory; an abnormality in—simply put—the flow of time itself.

Athena continued. “I correlated these fluctuations with the measurements taken during Miss Oxton’s first battle with Chronal Disassociation. They are an _exact match.”_

Winston was speechless. McCree even more so.

Winston finally snapped from his stunned silence and stammered a response. “What you’re telling us, Athena, is that somewhere, someone has built another chamber… and is trying to bring Lena back?”

“Precisely, Winston. And I think I know who it could be: In Dorado, Miss Oxton and Commander Morrison discovered a file about her that had been compiled and kept by LumériCo, as you know. Specifically, it was about the chronal accelerator. Sombra hacked into LumériCo’s databases to uncover that exact information for Reaper’s use.

“It stands to reason that Talon would use the information they found to make the technology necessary to pull her back into reality and subject her to interrogation; or worse, use her to meet their goals. If I were to wager a guess at the latter, it would be that they aim to replace the position that Miss Lacroix once held.”

McCree and Winston slowly turned to face one another. The gravity of this was beyond overwhelming; Tracer held against her will by Talon… Unthinkable.

McCree’s face suddenly gnarled with rage. He shot from his chair without warning.

“Jesse? Jesse! What are you doing?”

He flew from the room, then into and out of the atrium just as quickly. He stormed past people in the halls without a word. The base was up in arms soon enough, completely lost as to what was happening.

“Jesse?” Mei fretted, trying to keep pace with him as he tore through the base in a death march. “What’s happening?”

“I’ll explain later.”

Soon enough, everybody had converged behind him, following him just to see where he was going. He turned into the room that housed Jürgen’s cell.

He wanted answers. Nobody was going to stop him from getting them.

He threw the door open, slammed it shut behind him, and propped one of the chairs up against it, under the handle.

“He’ll kill him if we don’t stop him,” Winston said. “We have to get in there!”

“Somebody care to explain what the hell is going on?” Jack ordered.

“Later! Get the door open!”

The others rushed to the one-way window as Jack tried in vain to open the door.

McCree kicked the chair out from under Jürgen, placed the man’s leg between the chair’s folded ones, and placed his own foot on its back.

“What the hell are you doing, man?!” Jürgen cried.

McCree neglected to acknowledge the shrill and cracking plea. “I’m gonna snap your _fuckin’_ shins in half if you don’t answer my question. Talon’s base—where is it?”

“What are you talking about?! Y-you blew up their headquarters months ago, only random cells are left!”

He howled in pain as McCree applied pressure to the chair.

“Oh, you like playin’ games, do you?” Mcree taunted. “Alright, let’s play one.”

He drew Peacemaker and a single bullet from the bandolier around his waist. He loaded the bullet, spun the cylinder, and flipped it back into the housing.

“You strike me as a gamblin’ man, Jürgen. You ever played Russian Roulette before?”

“What?!”

“Good, glad to hear it. Off we go.” McCree primed the hammer. “Where is Talon’s base?”

“There isn’t one! I told you!”

McCree pulled the trigger. It clicked harmlessly.

“Stop lying. Where is Talon’s base?”

“They don’t have one, I swear! Please, man, I’m begging you, stop!”

_Click._

“ _Where is Talon’s base?!”_

_“Stop, for the love of god, please!”_

_Click._

Tears painted horror across Jürgen's quivering face as he flinched in fear with every pull of the trigger. McCree’s voice shook with fury. Fury he never showed. Fury nobody knew he had. Fury he didn’t even know he had.

“One of my best friends’ life is at stake. I’m running out of patience, and you’re running out of time.”

“It’s in the Himalayas!” Jürgen blurted out thoughtlessly.

McCree put more pressure on the chair. Any more and the man’s leg would have snapped in two. He cried out in agony.

“It’s somewhere in Switzerland. You’ve already bullshitted me enough, _don’t_ bullshit me again.”

“Okay, okay! Fuck! _Fuck!_ I’ll tell you!”

“I’m listening.”

“It’s in Julier Pass! In the Alps!”

“Athena, do you mind validatin’ that for me?”

“One moment, I’m adjusting the search parameters—I've found it. He’s telling the truth.”

McCree stood from the chair to allow Jürgen his fleeting, precious freedom. Jürgen pulled his leg out as fast as he could, and scrambled back towards the wall, clutching his shin in both hands.

McCree walked to him. Aiming the barrel mere inches to the side of his head, he pulled the trigger and fired the lone bullet into the wall with the very next shot. Jürgen’s hand snapped to his fiercely-ringing ear, and a reactionary frightened shriek burst past his lips.

He had cheated death by a hair. Funny—turned out he really was a gambler.

McCree crouched down close enough that Jürgen felt his breath on his face when he spoke.

“I don’t know if you’re a religious man, Jürgen… But if we go to Switzerland, and somethin’s happened to her because _you_ didn’t tell me where the base was in the first place?” He jabbed a steel finger into the man’s chest for emphasis. “You better get _real_ _fuckin’_ devout.”

McCree turned away, and left the man to wallow in his own fear. He yanked the chair from the door and dashed it across the room before exiting, forcing Jürgen to duck and lean out of the way to avoid what surely would have been a concussion at best.

He locked the door behind him. When he turned, everyone was staring at him, waiting. Mei awaited him most restlessly, throwing her arms around him as soon as he came back out.

“Sorry… Sorry you had to see that, darlin’. That wasn’t right of me. Lost my temper somethin' fierce."

“It’s okay, Jesse,” she said, fraught with worry. “It’s okay…”

“We heard everything,” Angela said. “You’re sure Talon has her?”

“Yeah, I’m sure.”

Amélie had just missed the commotion. Elbowing her way to the front of the crowd, her expression asked what her voice could not.

“They’ve got her, Améile,” McCree said solemnly. “Talon has Tracer.”

Her mind reeled, imagination and fear rearing their hideous heads; Lena’s captivity with Talon meant torture, psychological mutilation, chemical alterations… Unthinkable atrocities. The same fate she once had to endure would befall Lena. Talon was ruthless, methodical, devoid of empathy and anything synonymous with it—they would turn her into their tool as they once had done to her own self.

An image came to her; Lena, wires hanging from her skin, marred by trial and abuse; her mind broken and twisted; the light in her eyes consumed by experimentation. She wondered for the briefest of moments if that were already the case. If they were too late, then—

No. She would kill them all before she let that happen.

“I’m getting her back,” she sighed. “ _We_ are getting her back.”

“Damn right,” McCree said. “Saddle up, Overwatch; we’re staging ourselves a rescue mission.”


	11. Breaking Chains

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tracer orchestrates an escape.

Tracer snapped back into reality again. Bat was in his usual spot leaning on the windowsill, his chin resting on the backs of his hands.

She saw him look to his right, and call to the others behind him.

The door to the chamber slid open with a hiss. He and two others stepped into it, holding the harness.

It was ready. They were going to put it on her.

She shook her head, backing away as far as the walls would allow.

“Stay the hell away from me,” she said, just above a whisper. “Don’t any of you come anywhere near me.”

They paid no attention to her pleas. Bat cackled in glee, standing behind the two other scientists. They advanced toward her. She was trapped. She tried to stay away, but it was in vain. They threw the harness over her shoulders.

She was tangible, now; enough that they could hold her in place while securing the latches.

Realizing this, she kicked the man in front of her in the stomach, and he doubled over into the floor. She slammed her elbow into another’s nose and heaved her fist into the jaw of the third, Bat, as she spun around free from their grasp. That felt good.

Electricity surged through her body. She howled through clenched teeth as she collapsed to the ground.

Incapacitated, the belts and latches were secured once the men recovered. They pulled her up and shoved her out of the room. Her legs didn’t have the strength to catch her, and she crumbled again. Bat laughed his hyena-like laugh.

She was dragged to a dull, blank white room with a high ceiling, furnished by two chairs and a single table. A window hung high on the wall. They dropped her into the chair furthest from the door, and left.

Minutes passed by. She seethed in her seat for each and every second, trying to plan how she could escape. Overwatch would come to help. She knew they would.

A voice blared over the room’s speakers, startling her.

“ _Who are you?”_ it questioned.

“What?”

“ _What is your name?”_

She had no interest in answering any question they issued her.

“First name ‘Fuck’, last name ‘Off’.”

She was shocked again; not quite as severely as last time, but still greatly painful.

_“What is your name?”_

“You already know what it is, quit it with the pointless theatrical crap. Jesus, you're such a tool."

“' _Lena Oxton'. Y_ _ou will forget this name, and the girl it belonged to.”_

“Oh yeah?”

“ _In time, yes, you will. Who do you work for?”_

She extended her middle finger and held the crude gesture up to the window at whoever was behind it. Voltage coursed through her again.

“ _Repeat after me; ‘I work for Talon.’”_

“Up yours.”

Again.

_Torture me all you want. I’m not giving you a damn thing._

She fought back tears, trying hard to make it hard to tell, and her heart beat so fast it threatened to shatter her ribcage. The questioning went on for another ten agonizing minutes.

“ _This will resume tomorrow.”_

“Looking forward to it,” she replied in the most level voice she could muster.

Tracer heard him whispering in the background, catching only snippets of the conversation.

_“…of patience...chemical…So soon?...first thing tomorrow…”_

Back she went to seething in silence. The one hour mark passed by. Then the second. In the depriving quiet, she thought. She planned.

How could she stop the electrocutions? They had to have followed the same design as Winston’s when they were making the accelerator—maybe she could spot some inconsistency in the design, something that clearly had to be what delivered the voltage.

She looked for cameras; one high in the corner to her right, and one at the opposite corner, up and to her left. No blind spots.

She sat so that her back obscured her plan from the view of the camera behind her. She unbuckled the harness and shed herself of it, holding it in her hands just under the table.

She moved with exaggerated slowness; if she were lucky, maybe they would think she was simply staring at it, caught in an introspective monologue. She had little time, regardless.

She carefully turned the accelerator in her hands, looking for a maintenance panel.

 _Alright, it’s secured by screws. Maybe the buckle_ _’ll fit…?_

She tried wedging one of the buckles of the harness into the slot of the screw’s flat head. Almost, but not quite small enough. If she forced it, then…

_Yes! Let’s get this thing off… Oka_ _y… Whole mess of wires; this is that inertial dampener, like the one in the Slipstream… Hell-ooo, what d’we have here? Looks like an electrode—this is it!_

She noticed that she had been hunched over perhaps just a bit too far. She glanced around at the cameras, slowly, hoping that whoever was behind them wasn’t suspicious yet.

Straightening slightly, and damning herself for not being more careful, she continued her search.

_Okay, I gotta give this thing a yank. Ought to use the belt, that’ll keep it from frying my fingers off._

She looped the fabric of the buckle around the electrode, and started to pull.

 _Come on, come on, get outta there—ha! Brilliant!_ _I could have made a better accelerator than these sods! Dead from the neck up, the lot of ‘em. Hopefully that’s the end of that._

Using the exposed wires that frayed out from where the electrode once was, she created a bypass to the quantum distortion array—again, an improved-upon version of the model used in the Slipstream—so she could blink. She fumbled with the copper wires, trying to guide them together and twist them around one another with the fabric belt wrapped around her fingers. It was unwieldly, but she succeeded.

_Alrighty, I think that worked…? Let’s give it a go._

She latched the harness back on, and the next thing she knew, she was out of the chair and three feet from the wall. She almost fell over in laughter; _now_ she was in business.

She heard rushed footsteps from beyond the door. They’d grown suspicious enough to send someone. It slid open, revealing a soldier with a rifle in-hand. He raised it to her.

“Stop! Hands in the air!”

She giggled at the futility of his command, and blinked up to him. She tore the rifle from his hands, hooking the stock into his chin as she twirled back around with it. He hit the floor fast; she struck him again, dead centre of his forehead.

A siren blared throughout the corridor, and presumably throughout the entire base, wailing:

“ _CHRONOS has escaped. CHRONOS has escaped. This is not a drill. CHRONOS has escaped. CHRONOS has escaped…”_

_Blimey, they even gave me a cool nickname._


	12. Jailbreak

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Overwatch goes to Talon's base in Switzerland to free their friend Tracer and bring her home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the really late upload today, guys! A bunch of shit came up tonight, so I had to get that out of the way and was preoccupied for most of the day. Anyway, I hope you like this one! This is another lengthy chapter, and then we have one more to go!
> 
> EDIT 11/30/2016: Added in a line of Tracer dialogue closer to the end, made minor changes to the narration, and changed up the interaction between Bat, Tracer, Amélie and the other scientists; I felt that what I had written originally didn't quite do it justice, or fit the characters as well as it could have (honestly this entire chapter feels like a rushed piece of shit to me BUT I MEAN HEY NOT A LOT I CAN DO ABOUT IT NOW EH?)

Harsh winds whipped through the valley, carrying with it hail that bit like frozen bullets. The knee-high snow slowed Overwatch’s ascent to a crawl.

Angela, Mei, Amélie, Torbjörn and Reinhardt fared well, being that they were each equally at home in the cold; Angela was born here in Switzerland, and Torbjörn in Sweden; Reinhardt and Mei had both spent their fair share of time in frigid climates; Amélie barely felt it at all, owing to the deceleration and deoxygenation of her blood. At least the alterations to her body had ended up counting for something.

Some of the others had some… difficulties.

Ana was never one to vocalize complaints, and it was a trait that she had passed on to Fareeha in its entirety. That being said, having hailed from a sub-Equatorial climate meant that she was not as well suited to the cold as her comrades were. Still, she made no fuss.

Lúcio cracked a joke every now and then to try and keep the mood light—something he was never incapable of doing—and to distract himself from the fact that he had been shivering uninterrupted practically since the moment they’d set foot in Switzerland. he still remained his characteristically jubilant self.

McCree, on the other end of the spectrum, would likely have complained incessantly had he not known that much more composure was required of him. He kept his mouth shut, resisting the urge to bitch about how much he hated the cold.

Fareeha trudged through the snow behind Ana, who shielded her face with her hood whenever the wind would pick up. D.Va was explaining to her that her MEKA had internal heating; Ana laughed, and asked if she had enough room to sit beside her.

Her attention was torn from the conversation, almost drowned out by the howling wind, when Angela walked up next to her.

“Happy to be home?” Fareeha asked, starting a conversation to keep herself distracted.

“It’s nice to be back, yes. Although I’d prefer we were in nicer weather. And that it be under less worrisome circumstances.”

Fareeha nodded. “We’ll get her back.”

“I know we will,” Angela replied. “I wonder how Amélie is doing.”

The two looked to her. A fire burned in her eyes, a wonder that it wasn’t hot enough to boil the air around her. Everyone had stolen a glance at her every now and then to see how she was doing, as if she could be anything but worried sick.

“She’s angry,” Fareeha said. “And scared. I would be, too.”

“It will be good to see her feeling better once we get Lena back.”

“Mhm.”

There was a pause, a telling silence; something about it made Fareeha well aware that something other than their objective was on Angela’s mind.

“Is something wrong, Angela?”

“I’m just worried,” she lied.

“I know that. Something else is wrong though, isn’t it?”

She saw the puff of air from Angela’s sigh.

“I’m sorry,” she began, deciding that looking at the snow at her feet was easier than looking at Fareeha in that moment. “About the other night. About asking you to stay with me. It was selfish and out of line.”

“It’s okay.”

“No, it isn’t,” she retorted self-condemningly. “I took advantage of your kindness because I was being stubborn and overly-emotional. It was unacceptable, and you know that as well as I do.”

“I don’t care if it’s unacceptable by your metric or anyone else’s,” Fareeha said, not harsh, but stern. “If that’s what needs to be done to ensure that you’re okay, then I would do it again in a heartbeat.”

She looked over to Angela. Her eyes, cool and blue, and all but completely alight with surprise and adoration, pierced through the wall of snow.

“And if I’m being honest,” Fareeha continued, “I slept better that night than I had any of the nights before. You really could treat a patient in your sleep, it seems.” She smiled brightly.

Angela felt like the two feet of snow was the only thing holding her up. She wanted to be angry at herself, and at Fareeha to a certain degree, for being so damned perfect.

She sighed again. “Thank you, Fareeha. That means a great deal to me.”

“Any time.” She looked up from Angela. “Looks like we’ve got something.”

They caught up with Mei and McCree, who’d been at the fore of their expedition. The group stopped behind them, standing before a giant set of steel blast doors.

“Seems like the place,” McCree said, searching the doors. He looked to Mei. “You ready for this?”

“As I’ll ever be.” She smiled, and reached up and kissed his cheek. “Be careful in there, cowboy.”

He smirked sarcastically. “Aren’t I always?”

Mei grinned and rolled her eyes, knowing full well that he literally never was. She turned to the group behind them. “Reinhardt, would you please open the door for a lady?”

“With pleasure, dear,” he responded, his voice low and foreboding. He twirled the hammer in the palm of his hand as he approached the door.

Fire and smoke erupted from the engines on the hammer’s head. He swung it fiercely, slamming it into the door with a deafening boom. A massive dent curved into the steel.

He swung again; the doors curled inward, ajar and almost completely broken down.

“You may want to stand back, friends.”

The one-man German siege engine glided across the ground, the engine in the back plate of his armor belching flame as it roared to life. He crunched into the doors, and they flew inward, revealing a vehicle bay lined with snowmobiles and small unmanned stealth craft. Mechanics ran in fear, and soldiers took up positions behind the vehicles to train their fire on the doors.

Up went Reinhardt’s shield, and in went Overwatch. They made short work of the soldiers in the bay. Surprising—they expected far more resistance.

The dust settled, and the noise died down enough for them to realize that an alarm was sounding off. “ _CHRONOS has escaped; inbound for Vehicle Bay Two. CHRONOS has escaped; inbound for Vehicle Bay Two.”_

“‘Chronos’, huh?” Jack pondered aloud. “You think that’s—”

“Uh, guys?” Lúcio interrupted. As they turned to him, he pointed to the wall upon which was painted a large 2.

High along the left wall, at the end of a catwalk towards the back of the room, a door whipped open; out flew a young woman, thin as a rail and fast as a shot, shouting and laughing at her pursuers as she left them in her wake.

“Try and keep up!”

From her shoulder, she unslung a belt of explosives she’d acquired and hurled it at the doorway, leaping backwards. The men just outside the room cried out, unable to flee in time as she fired a volley of gunfire before her back hit the ground. An explosion rocked the room, and flames engulfed one end of the causeway. She rolled back to her feet, and ran into the door at the other end.

McCree drew his head back, turning to face the others in increments. He pointed a thumb over his shoulder. “I think Tracer’s out.”

Everyone turned to Amélie, expecting input. Reinhardt burst into laughter.

“What are you waiting for? Onwards, my friend! Go get her! We’ll be right behind you!”

Amélie cracked a smile, and ran ahead. She grappled to the causeway and whipped into the room Tracer had disappeared into.

The door revealed a small corridor, which she found out bridged the gap between Vehicle Bay Two and Three.

She entered the adjacent motor pool. The door at the opposite end of the catwalk had just closed. Tracer was not far ahead.

Her attention was torn from the door by panicked cries.

“Is that Widowmaker?!”

“Engage, engage! Take her down!”

Pinned in the doorway by a wall of gunfire, she awaited a break in the assault, and darted out. She launched a venom mine from her gauntlet into the soldiers’ midst. Those who reacted in time scattered like ants from a boot. Those who didn’t fell to the steel floor, writhing in a fit of dry heaves and lungs set aflame. Her rifle cracked once, twice, and more men fell. She retreated into the door.

Another corridor, this one lined with windows along the right side that provided a view of a large manufacturing plant. Robotic arms clutched parts of experimental projects that likely would have ethics boards across the world rolling in their graves if they ever saw the light of day. As was Talon’s wont, she supposed.

Beyond the door at the end was a small laboratory. A chamber punctuated by dots of red light branched from the room, separated by a wall fitted with thick glass windows. To her right, a wall was lined with consoles. Two Talon soldiers lay dead, and four men in labcoats were on their knees, shivering in fear.

Save for one, who was held by the collar of his coat by a furious and vengeful young woman.

“Lena?”

Tracer's head raised. Her grip on the lab coat loosened ever so slightly.

“Amélie?” she whispered.

She turned around. All traces of anger and want of vengeance detectable on her face were defused in an instant.

“Amélie!”

Amélie cast her rifle aside and took long, purposeful strides across the room, and Tracer met her in the middle. Their lips met with enough force that their teeth clashed together.

Amélie took Tracer’s face in her hands, and Tracer wound hers around Amélie’s back.

“Are you okay?” Amélie asked.

“Hell of a lot better now,” Tracer tiredly laughed.

“I didn’t know if we’d make it in time. I was so scared _…”_ she whispered in her mother tongue.

“You’re speakin’ French, love.”

“I said I was scared.” Her forehead fell into Tracer's. “I love you.”

“I love you too. _God_ , I love you so much.”

Tracer looked up after cherished seconds, reminded that their reunion had onlookers. What do they do with the scientists? She couldn’t just kill them all in cold blood, no matter how vindicated she would feel.

“What do you want to do with them?” Amélie asked, her voice seeping with contempt.

Tracer pondered. She found to her own genuine surprise that she didn’t feel like concerning herself with the outcome of their wretched lives.

Her brow furrowed. “Lock them in here and leave the rest up to fate. I don’t care anymore.”

She looked to Bat, eyes narrow and seething in defiance of his own piercing gaze.

"Where are the other prisoners?"

"The other prisoners?" he repeated, laughing. "They're dead. Talon executes any prisoners in the event of a breach to avoid any escapes. If you'd just stayed put like a good little pup, they'd be alive and well." He howled in laughter. "They're dead! You can't save them! They're dead because of  _you!"_

Tracer's shoulders shakily fell as she exhaled. Without warning, she drew the handgun from the holster on Amélie’s leg, walked to Bat, and pressed the barrel into his forehead hard enough to force his head against the terminal.

"Lena, wait."

The only voice in the world that could have stopped her, could have quelled her rage. Tracer turned to Amélie, keeping a firm hold on Bat's collar.

"Let me do it," Amélie said.

Tracer thought about protesting. In this moment, she wanted nothing more than to snatch the life from this pathetic little man.

But Amélie was right. Better that she do it. Tracer was tired.

“The rest of them can rot,” she whispered, her gaze weighing heavily upon them. “I don’t want anything to do with them.”

She exited the room, awaiting Amélie outside.

Amélie turned back to Bat, who still maintained his wolfish grin.

"Hello, Gunther."

"Widowmaker," he returned. "Or are you going by Amélie these days?"

"Not by people like you."

Gunther seemed to revel in the exchange—beyond giddiness. He rung his hands, stifling another of his cackles.

"I've not seen you since your reconditioning. Seems you've thrown your hat in with Overwatch, now. How's that going?"

"They don't torture me or subject me to chemical therapy, so rather well."

"Oh, Amélie, darling, please. You and I—we're past that now, aren't we?"

Amélie unsheathed a knife from the scabbard on her leg. Faster than he could react, the blade was slicing through his jugular like paper.

"We are now," Amélie whispered to him, as the light fled his eyes, his plaguing, vexing, evil eyes. "For Lena, you _vile filth_."

She left the room, the scientists, and Gunther as he fell to the floor amidst a crimson pool, behind her without any further words. She was of a similar with Tracer—they could all rot.

The door slid open, revealing Tracer, her back to the entrance and anxiously waiting. Amélie silently approached, and entwined their fingers together. Her thumb stroked Tracer’s hand, and she gave a gentle squeeze.

Behind Tracer, whose eyes she gladly met, she saw a figure in the manufacturing plant below; clad in colours of night and striding towards them. He leveled two weapons at the windows.

 _“Run!”_ Amélie shouted.

They ducked their heads and ran in a breakneck sprint as the windows blew apart behind them. Black smoke poured through the opening and materialized behind them as Reaper’s imposing form.

They re-entered Vehicle Bay Three. Overwatch awaited them down below, engaged in a firefight with Talon soldiers.

Someone tossed Tracer her gauntlets, though she didn’t see who. She vaulted over the catwalk railing and seized them midair. She rolled as she landed, secured them to her forearms, and flicked out her pistols.

“Am, jump!”

Amélie fired a mine onto the ceiling before hopping down to regroup with Tracer and the others. The glass casing on the mine shattered, and the cloud of caustic gas chewed through the ceiling supports like tissue paper.

Reaper emerged from the hallway moments later. Under his weight, the causeway peeled away from the ceiling and lurched downwards. He fell to the ground, and the metal bridge came crashing down on top of him.

The pile of metal rubble shifted and spilled over as he stood from beneath it, shrugging off dust and steel. He fired again without missing a beat. Everyone fell behind cover.

Tracer dove behind a concrete barricade, finding herself beside Angela.

"'Ello, Angie!"

Angela laughed. “Good to see you, but perhaps now's not the time. Save it for later, hm?”

Jet black vapour coalesced in front of them. The next thing they knew, they were staring down the barrels of Reapers shotguns as he growled a laugh.

Tracer was fast enough. Angela wouldn’t be, and she knew that.

She turned away, sealing her eyes shut, and—

Instead of a gunshot, she heard the roaring of an engine and a loud _whoomph_. Something had whipped by at a speed that defied eyesight. Reaper vanished in an instant in a blur of blue and black.

Fareeha speared into him like a human javelin, blowing apart the wall she hurled towards with a missile. A gust of frigid air burst through the breached concrete. In the blink of an eye, Fareeha was back outside and soaring skywards with her arms clutched around Reaper.

Tracer turned to Angela, her mouth in an agape smile.

“Holy shit, that was _so cool!”_

Angela couldn’t share her disposition; Fareeha was in a midair gridlock with a murderer.

She darted to the exit, Ana hot on her heels. Reinhardt shielded their leave as Overwatch mopped up what was left of Talon’s forces.

They turned to the skies and watched as Fareeha flew upwards, piercing the white veil of hail and snowfall with Reaper in her clutches.

 _"Hey Reaper!"_ Tracer called out. _"Get stuffed, you slag!"_

The two of them slammed armored fists into the other, wherever they could. Flinging him free in an aileron roll, Fareeha leveled her rocket launcher and fired. The missile almost found purchase in his sternum, but he had dispelled into vapour and reformed at her back. He dug his heel into the junction of wing and suit, and tore one of the Raptora’s wings loose.

He threw himself from her, content to let her spiral to her death.

She wasn’t about to go quietly. With eye-watering speed, she whirled around and grabbed a fistful of Reaper’s cloak—a one-in-a-million catch.

They were locked together again, rocketing towards the earth in a deadly arc, twirling in freefall, trying to get the other to hit the ground first. Smoke billowed from the Raptora suit, its engine ripped free and belching soot and cinders. They left a jagged, onyx scar in their wake, painted across the sky as they careened towards the earth at terminal velocity.

They smashed into the ground. The impact shot spires of snow into the air. Overwatch ran to their location, torn from their awed observation of the lethal mid-air brawl.

Before they’d even arrived, the two were back on their feet and at each other’s throats again. Reaper kicked Fareeha away and extricated two shotguns from the confines of his cloak, firing a volley of shots whose blasts resounded throughout the valley. She recoiled from the impacts, the last of them sending her to the ground.

Ana fired a tranquilizer from her sidearm; the needle bore into Reaper's neck. He barked in pain, and fell to a knee.

Before he could remove the syringe, Angela twirled her Caduceus Staff with a shout. She arced it upwards in a pulverizing swath and caught him under his jaw. His head snapped back, and he fell into the snow, unconscious.

Rifle and staff discarded into the blanket of snow, they converged on Fareeha, and were at her side in an instant. The others gathered behind them.

Ana placed her hands on the pauldrons of the Raptora, shaking her to consciousness.

“Fareeha?!”

No response. She removed her helmet; her eyes were shut, and blood trickled from a cut on her cheek.

Ana and Angela shot feverish glances at the punctures in her armor; wires frayed out from the cracked blue plating, coughing up sparks that leapt away from the Raptora’s internal flame retardancy protocols. Had the shells gone all the way through? It was difficult to tell.

Ana’s hands moved to her daughter’s face. “Fareeha, get up. Wake up!”

She looked to Angela, whose eyes swelled with fear all the same.

“Do something,” Ana ordered. “Please.”

Fareeha grumbled from beneath her. Her brow knit together as she turned her head into the snow. “Five more minutes, mum.”

Ana was relieved.

At first.

 _“…What?”_ she barked.

Fareeha slowly smiled, and began to rise to laughter. Angela breathed a sigh of relief, shaking her head at the terrible, _terrible_ joke.

Ana pushed away, catching herself before she hit the ground with the palms of her hands. “Fareeha, that’s _not funny!”_

She was howling with laughter now, her eyes still closed. Angela couldn’t help but join her—more out of relief than finding even a shred of comedic validity in the prank—despite it being under the scrutinizing eye of Fareeha’s bewildered mother. The others stirred with abated laughter behind them.

Fareeha’s hysterics eventually diminished. She opened her eyes and saw Angela hunched over her, her face buried in her arms that she had folded over Fareeha’s chestplate to support herself.

Angela lifted her head, and their eyes met. Fareeha sighed in relief and let her head fall back against the snow.

“Good, I made it in time.”

“Yes,” Angela responded. “Yes, you did.”

“And Tracer? Is she okay? We got her too, right?”

That was her cue. Tracer slid next to her with a hearty laugh.

“That was the coolest thing I’ve _ever_ seen!”

They laughed again, and Fareeha gave Tracer’s arm an endearing shake. She needed their help getting up; while the shells had not breached clean through her armor, they certainly still left a mark. She sucked cold air through her clenched teeth as she stood, but she’d been through much worse.

They heard a hiss. They turned to where Reaper lay, only to find an imprint left in the snow. He had vanished again—slipped between their fingers.

Fareeha was angry. Galled that he had gotten away again. But, she wasn’t sure what they would have done with him anyway; as far as she knew, he couldn’t be killed—at least not by means which they possessed—and they didn’t have the resources to keep him captive. Maybe one day they would rid themselves of him once and for all, but today was not that day.

For now, she could be happy with another victory.

“Sorry, mom,” she said, still trying to stymie laughter. “That was mean.”

Ana turned to her with a scowl, though it faded quickly. She wrapped her arms around Fareeha’s neck.

She did give her head a smack as she withdrew, though.


	13. Regalement

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After a successful rescue, Overwatch returns home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ALRIGHTY LAST CHAPTER I'VE SPENT TOO MUCH TIME TRYING TO UN-SHIT THIS THING BUT IF I KEEP FUCKING ABOUT WITH IT IT'LL BE WORSE SO FUCK IT I'M UPLOADING IT HERE WE GO

Overwatch was back in London. They took to the lounge almost instantly when they returned to celebrate the successful rescue and subsequent return of Lena Oxton. Bottles were opened, stories and laughs were shared—reminiscent of their first reunion here, back when Winston first initiated the recall.

They never tired of reunions like these. They meant that, for a fleeting moment amidst a chaotic, conflicted world, all was well.

Tracer sat reclined on a couch with Amélie, enveloped in her arms as the others drank and talked and laughed.

She relaxed into Amélie’s form as she felt fingers run through her hair, humming in response through a smile. She rested her head below Amélie’s chin, and closed her eyes, drifting away to the rhythmic rise and fall of her chest.

“I love you, Am,” she said,

“I love you too.”

“I love you a lot. Like,  _a lot_ a lot."

Amélie exhaled a gentle laugh. She was fond of these moments. “Still got you beat, _chérie.”_

Tracer looked up at her, at her harshly beautiful eyes. “Thanks. For saving me.”

Amélie lifted Tracer’s lips to hers with her hand beneath her chin. “We had to; not quite sure what we’d do without you.”

 _What_ I’d _do without you._

Tracer shrugged. “Oh, you guys’d be fine, I’m sure. Wouldn’t be _nearly_ as fun around here, but I think you’d manage.”

How she loved to hear Amélie laugh.

“That much is certain.”

McCree strolled up to them. Plastered upon his face was that devious smirk of his that foretold of some mischievous idea.

Amélie and Tracer looked to him in unison. His grin grew wider.

“Uh oh,” Amélie jibed.

“Am I interrupting anything?”

“Yeah, but, go on,” Tracer teased.

He revealed a bottle of scotch that he had been concealing behind his back. He flipped it in his hand, holding it by the neck so Tracer could read the label and discern that it was her favourite make.

“Buckle up, kiddo; you and I ain’t leavin’ till one of us is unconscious at the bottom of this bottle.”

She had been challenged; her eyes went alight with competitive instinct. “Oh, you’re on, cowboy.”

She placed a kiss on Amélie’s lips, just long enough, before propelling from the couch. Amélie watched her go with a smile.

The incomparable joy of having Lena back again was a stark contrast to the fear she’d felt at the prospect of losing her. It was one thing to have seen her confined to a hospital bed by physical trauma, but to imagine her as she drifted through an unknowable void was altogether different. It wasn’t fair, what this girl had been through. This sweet, reckless, beautiful young girl who wanted nothing but to make the world a better place to live in. It wasn’t fair that she had to fight.

But nothing had been easy for either of them, when she thought about it. They had each seen a lifetime’s worth of strife and torment, but they were happy, and here, and in love in spite of all of it.

Amélie once thought she could never feel again; that she was destined to roam the earth as a shell of a woman. Imagine the look on her own face if she could go back and tell herself that someone would eventually come along to make it all better.

What a ridiculous turn of events it had all turned out to be.

Her monologue was interrupted when Ana beckoned her over to sit with her. She was joined by Reinhardt, Fareeha, Jack, Winston and Angela.

She sat with them, and Reinhardt slid a glass across the table. The amber liquid sloshed over the rim of the glass as it skidded to a halt in front of her. She was never one for drinking beer—her tastes were a bit more refined, though she didn’t like putting it that way due to how absurdly arrogant it sounded—but she could make an exception. The company she was in made it easy to.

Reinhardt raised a tankard in the air. “Thank you for joining us, Amélie! To Lena, and to Overwatch!”

They knocked their glasses together and drank deeply in a toast, sans Winston. They glanced over to see Tracer and McCree across from one another with Torbjörn and Mei as onlookers. Five shotglasses per participant were already upturned on the table, though neither showed even a hint of determent.

“Thank you, Winston,” Amélie suddenly said. Those seated at the table turned to her.

“What for?”

“It’s because of you and your invention that she’s here right now. I’m more grateful for that than I can hope to describe.”

He turned to see Tracer in a fit of laughter with McCree, their faces red from either drunkenness or hysterical giggling. He smiled at the sight of them.

“You two have been through enough. It’s the least I can do.”

Reinhardt laughed and smacked an open palm to Winston’s shoulder. “Enough modesty! You’re a hero, my friend!”

“Hear hear,” Ana said as she finished a swig from her drink. “By the way, I’ve been meaning to ask you something, Fareeha,” she said as she set the bottle down.

“Mhm?”

“Do you still have that crush on Doctor Ziegler?”

Of course the entire room had to go silent for _that_ one.

Fareeha stared an indignant glare at Ana, who grinned fiendishly as she took a nonchalant sip. Angela choked on hers, her face going red from coughing.

Tracer spat out the scotch she’d been in the middle of drinking when she heard. McCree burst into laughter.

“Looks like I win this one!”

“Yeah, yeah. Round two in a bit!” She swept from the table over to Fareeha and Angela. “Now _what_ did Ana just say?!”

Fareeha pinched the bridge of her nose. She glanced up again at her mother.

“Go on, tell her, Fareeha,” she said. “She didn’t quite hear.”

Fareeha rolled her tongue against the inside of her lip. She sighed deeply. Without looking at Tracer, she responded.

“She asked if I still had a crush on Angela…”

Tracer laughed so loud it almost surpassed Reinhardt’s. “How long ago?! Spill the beans, Amari!” She incessantly nudged her with her elbow. “You still fancy her? What about you, Angie? You got a thing for shredded Egyptian ladies, right?”

Angela’s glare said something akin to “I will be facing the most prolific medical malpractice attorney in the world soon enough if you don’t stop speaking.”

“This is for scaring the life out of me back in Switzerland, by the way,” Ana said through a vengeful smirk.

“Did you think that maybe I would have liked to keep this to myself for a while longer?” Fareeha added.

“ _Oh my god, you do!”_ Tracer howled again. _“You like Angie! We can call you The Lovebirds ‘cause you both fly!”_ She nearly fell on the floor in hysterics.

Amélie brought a hand to her mouth to laugh at either Lena’s reaction or Fareeha’s—whose face had fallen into her hands and surely wanted nothing more than to recede into her quarters and never come back out—as she wasn’t even sure herself whose was funnier.

Fareeha looked over to Angela, who was a shade of red she had never seen before. Angela glanced between her and the surface of the table with a cautious smile, and remained quiet.

Fareeha sighed. “Happy, mom?”

Ana waved a hand through the air. “Ecstatic.”

Fareeha and Angela locked eyes finally. They shared a long look with one another, studying the other’s expression.

Fareeha hadn’t even noticed that Tracer was mere centimetres from her face, shooting her eyebrows into her hairline in rapid succession. Fareeha put a palm to her face and pushed her away, not that that could have stopped her.

Turning back to Angela, she said, “Cat’s out of the bag now, I suppose.”

Angela looked taken aback for a split second, and in a final decisive moment, grabbed a fistful of the collar of Fareeha’s jacket with both hands and yanked her into a kiss.

The room whooped and cheered and whistled. Tracer watched with bated breath and an open, exuberant grin, clearly happier about this than anyone else for whatever reason.

They were _never_ going to live this down.

When they finally withdrew—with exaggerated slowness—they looked at one another for a few long seconds. They realized simultaneously that all they could do was laugh.

Forgetting that they were being watched by a crowd of people, Fareeha looked to Ana out of the corners of her eyes.

Ana shrugged and brought the glass to her mouth again, smiling a smile that was telltale of how pleased she was with herself.

“You’re welcome, dear.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that's that! Epoch is donion rings. I have no earthly idea what I'll do next, so it might be a while before I upload anything. Thanks for reading everybody, I hope you enjoyed my garbage!


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